Recycling

Refashion, a producer responsibility organisation, has launched Industrial Challenge, a project that seeks to deploy innovative industrial solutions for recycling non-reusable used textiles and footwear in France and Europe.

The ever-growing textile industry has a few recycling options for waste fabrics to keep end-of-use clothing articles within the value chain. Experiments showcase a new technology that can separate fibres in mixed fabrics.

Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have developed a tool that measures the amount of elastane present in a garment, paving the way for its segregation/removal from blended textiles, thus making a considerable number of textiles suitable for recycling.

OnceMore—the world’s first large-scale process for recycling blended fabrics—uses a proprietery process that combines post-consumer textile waste with renewable wood from responsibly managed forests to produce high-quality textile pulp. Åsa Degerman, Project Leader for OnceMore at forest industry group Södra talks recycling.

Three players from the textile industry have forged a partnership to give France its first industrial plant for automated sorting and recycling of textile waste to produce recycled fibres for the spinning, nonwovens, and composites industries.

Fashion for Good has launched ‘Re-Start’, a textile recovery alliance in India, and released a toolkit designed to revalorise textile waste in the country.

How to create a textile recycling supply chain? Canadian nonprofit Fashion Takes Action (FTA) has a prototype following the successful conclusion of a mechanical textile recycling pilot project. 

When founders of a startup super specialised in spectrometry, electronics design, programming, come together to build devices and scientific instruments that can identify plastic, textile and textile blends, it is indeed time for industry to take notice. texfash.com talks to Lieve Vanrusselt, an early invester and currently Head of Business Development at Matoha Instrumentation Ltd to know about the product, the journey and the road ahead.

A study by scientists at Brunel University London is studying some microorganisms and their plastic-degrading enzymes which could be engineered to have even better activity.

Wood-based specialty fibres major Lenzing Group has launched the Lenzing Ecovero with Refibra technology which identifies the fibre at every stage of the supply chain, ensuring traceability and transparency, and empowering brands and retailers to enable consumers to make informed purchases.