The future of recycling textiles

Swiss residents produce 50,000 tons of old clothes every year. Those who don't sell their fashion items at a flea market usually donate it to the old clothes collections. Texaid collects and recycles around three-quarters of these textiles. Any clothes that can’t be worn anymore and therefore can’t be sold as second-hand clothing are downcycled and made into cleaning rags, insulating materials, or shoddy. Although this is a waste of high-quality materials such as cotton, it happens on a large scale and in growing quantities every year. Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and Texaid are now partnering up to solve this problem.

Rethinking

The scientists at the Swiss university are investigating ways of recycling unusable textiles in a high-quality way. Their project, which is named «Texcycle», aims to ensure that clothes are not separated according to type, but according to material. This makes it easier to recycle the textiles. «We recycle the 30 percent that isn't fit for wearing anymore. To make something new out of it, we need to know what it's made of,» says Daniel Wehrli, industrial designer and research assistant at the Department of Design & Art at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. «With a pair of jeans, for instance, it's quite simple because their main material is cotton. Other clothing items require separating the material. By doing so, high-quality fabrics such as cotton can be declared as such.»

The material for the prototypes is spun into threads at Wollspinnerei Huttwil AG. This yarn is 100 percent recyclable and can be processed into carpets. The resulting waste products (dust and fibres that are too short) can be used to produce sound insulation liner, for instance. In a next step, the researchers are working on a method to gain fine yarn and use it to make new clothes. This is an important step in closing the textile life cycle.