Nowadays, many fashionable clothes are becoming a serious problem for the environment. Because most clothes today are not designed to be reused. And there are more and more clothes being produced every day. But many brands have started to produce and sell recycled clothes. But the amount of clothes recycled is still less than the amount of clothes produced normally.
Clothing recycling is not as widespread and widespread as plastic bottle recycling, because recycling clothes is difficult.
Nowadays, we see many brands recycling polyester and cotton, but the source of these recycled fibers is often not from clothing. Recycled polyester often comes from plastic bottles, and recycled cotton is often made from manufacturing waste, which means that most clothes are not actually designed to be recycled. It seems that the amount of clothes produced in a conventional way is not decreasing, but rather more clothes are being produced every day.
Why are clothes difficult to recycle?
Recycling is not the same as recycling plastic bottles, paper, glass or metals. Clothes have many different components, such as clothes with zippers, clothes with buttons, and different fabrics. In addition, chemicals from fabric dyes can affect recycling, making clothes unsuitable for recycling because it requires a very high budget to recycle.
Clothes made from natural fibers can be recycled by spinning them into yarn again. But the problem is that when the used fabric is spun, the durability of the yarn will decrease. Therefore, new yarn must be used to make the clothes strong enough.
However, many companies are currently looking for solutions to the problem of recycling clothes, such as BlockTexx from Australia and Evrnu from the United States, which have developed a process to recycle fibers from mixed fabrics, even though such recycled fibers are not widely available. The solutions to the problem of recycling clothes from both companies are as follows:
1.BlockTexx: Developing a recycling process for spinning fabric scraps, separating cellulose from cotton and linen, and separating polyester from used clothing.
2.Evrnu: Developing a technology that can efficiently recycle approximately nine types of fibers in textile waste. This technology breaks down textile waste into “raw materials” for clothing. Developing Lyocell fibers made from used fabric scraps and clothing. There are also synthetic fibers that can be melted down to reuse polyester.
In addition to these two companies, there is also a Spanish company called “Recover”, which carefully separates cotton textile waste to produce high-quality, recyclable cotton fibers using machines.
Synthetic fibers such as polyester and polyamide (nylon) can be recycled both mechanically and chemically. Chemical recycling through repolymerization (where the plastic fibers are melted) is an interesting option, as it preserves the quality of the original fibers.
The idea of solving this problem is very interesting, but in practice, it is still impossible to avoid polyester from plastic bottles, as the investment in separating some types of clothing components is quite high, such as jackets.
However, the best way to solve this problem is to wear clothes for as long as possible or buy second-hand clothes instead of new ones. However, this still cannot compete with the current production of more clothes than necessary.
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