Recycling garments

Acrylic and modacrylic fibers have a wool-like appearance and feel, and excellent resistance to heat, ultraviolet radiation, and chemicals [Bajaj and Kumari, 1987]. These fibers have replaced wool in many applications, such as socks, pullovers, sweaters, and craft yams. Other applications include tenting, awning fabric, and sandbags for rivershore stabilization. The use of acrylic and modacrylic fibers in carpets is low since these materials do not hold up well to recycling through hot-humid conditions. This also prevents its use in the easy-care garment market. 

In the operation of the invention, soiled garments are placed batchwise in an extractor, flushed with liquid CO2, and a solution of garment oil and CO2 is separated in an evaporator. The CO2 is recycled and the process continued until all the garment oil has been extracted. 

Smith, G.G., Barker, R.H., 1995. Life cycle analysis of a polyester garment. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 14, 233—249. 

In apparel production, primary recycling is the collection of pre-consumer offcuts of fabric from production. The nature of cut-and-sew manufacture of apparel means that there is significant textile waste resulting from the leftover fabric between individual pattern pieces. Rissanen (2008) estimates this as up to 15% of the yield required for each garment. 

After the raw material is recycled, it can be further classified according to the new product stream it enters. These two classifications are OLR and CLR. In OLR, a garment reaches the end of its useful life and the fibre is reclaimed for use in different products, therefore entering into a new product fife cycle (Curran, 2012). This may also be termed downcycling if the new product is of lesser economic value. Similarly, pre-consumer textile offcuts from apparel production may be collected and recycled into fibre for use in other products. 

This process is used to recycle fabrics made from natural fibres such as cotton and wool as well as synthetic fibres including polyesters, nylons and blended fibres. Hawley (2006) describes the mechanical processing technique used in facilities in Prato, Italy, where acrylic textiles are shredded down to fibre. In hw example, acrylic garments were sorted and cut up, mechanically shredded to fibre, and then re-spun into acrylic yam for weaving into blanketing (Hawley, 2006). 

OLR has proved feasible in the fashion context, both in collection of pre- and postconsumer textile waste for use in other products, and in collection of used bottles for recycling into textiles. Garments are suitable as a feedstock for products of lesser value, for example carpet underlay or insulation, with many applications possible. However, the varieties of fibre types and colours mean that the resulting shoddy is in unattractive greys or blacks that are unsuitable for spinning into apparel-quality yam. The wide variety of products that utilise pre-consumer textile waste and even post-consumer textile waste demonstrates that the recycling of textiles works when entering product streams of lesser value. 

The recovery and use of plastic bottles into RPET yams has had strong uptake from a number of apparel companies. Currently, OLR of PET bottles to fibre has had the greatest success for reuse as a material in the fashion sector, with an open loop of waste from the first product (PET bottles) used as feedstock for the second product system (polyester fabric to garment). A common approach is to blend the recycled yams with virgin fibres to create textiles that are of apparel quality. 

There are a number of ways to define CLR practices in the apparel industry. This section describes three recycling apparel textile waste (pre- or post-consumer) in order for it to re-enter the apparel supply chain cradle-to-cradle (C2C) streams of biological and technical materials and reuse of existing garments. 

In the first definition, CLR refers to recycling methods whereby the material being recycled is the same material being produced a product enters the production chain of the same product again after use (Klopffer and Grahl, 2014). Under this definition, provided that the waste textile or fibre re-enters a garment production chain, both pre- and post-consumer mechanically recycled textiles may be considered closed-loop recycled. Two approaches are illustrated in Figures 6.2—6.4. 

Garment life cycle Pre-consumer waste recycled to fibre... 

Individual apparel retailers have also branched out to inform the public of recycled content through labelling. R-Cert is an approach to labelling and tracking of recycled content developed by Esprit. Although a new initiative, it demonstrates a way to communicate with the pubhc regarding the recycled content in a garment. 

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