How many clothes, items of bedding and other fabric have you thrown away this year? While resale sites are growing in popularity, in the UK we still bin about 711,000 tonnes of textiles annually, external – roughly the weight of seven US aircraft carriers, external. The global fashion and textiles industry is one of the most wasteful, but recycling firms in Peterborough and Northamptonshire are using technology to change that.
They are gaining the attention of major brands but say they need laws, as well as consumers, to support them. In a warehouse next to the A14 in Kettering, a mountain of crumpled fabric is slowly fed into a machine. There are dressing gowns, duvets, branded banners and lanyards from events including the Commonwealth Games.
All are made from polyester – the world's most commonly used textile fibre – and all have been thrown away. Traditionally they would be burned or buried in landfill but Project Re:Claim is trying to change that. The partnership between The Salvation Army's trading arm (SATCoL) and Plan B Circular operates what they say is the first commercial-scale polyester textile-to-textile recycling facility in Europe – technology adapted from a bottle recycling plant.
The Salvation Army collects the items and those that cannot be reused in their current form are shredded and melted. Impurities such as dead skin cells and hair are removed and polyester pellets (rPET) are produced which can be used to make new clothes. "It's the future: using the clothing we have today to make the clothing that we need tomorrow," says Plan B Circular founder Tim Cross.
"We process 500kg of fabric an hour but we could easily scale up if there was demand. "The problem is encouraging clothing manufacturers to change from using virgin polyester to recycled polyester from old textiles. And to design their new clothes to be easily recycled at their end of life." "A polyester blazer doesn't need nylon buttons and labels.
A sports top doesn't need metal zips. It can all be polyester." That is important because the plant can only recycle items that are 100% polyester. Most clothing "is a fibre mix like polyester-cotton, or often three or four different materials," says Majonne Frost, head of sustainability at SATCoL.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
