The textile sector, which is well-known for its quick cycle of production and consumption, now produces seven to 7.5 million tons of textile waste annually in the European Union (EU-27 and Switzerland). This equates to around 15 kilograms of textile waste annually per person. According to a recent McKinsey analysis, over 85% of this waste is derived from household textiles and clothing that end users discard, with the remaining 15% coming from textile merchants and businesses in the form of manufacturing surpluses and industrial offcuts.
In 2022, the European Apparel and Textile Confederation (EURATEX) conducted a study on the management of post-consumer textile waste. The findings indicate that only 33% of this waste is collected separately in Europe, with the remaining 67% being burned or dumped in landfills worldwide. 60% of the collected post-consumer textile waste is processed and segregated for sale in consignment stores, with the other 40% going to recycling facilities. Furthermore, the European Environment Agency projects that in 2020, more than 1.4 million tons of textile waste would be exported from the EU and that may require huge efforts and funding in the furture to deal with such a massive issue..
Challenges Faced by the Textile Industry
The fast fashion industry exacerbates all of these statistics about the production of textile waste and its inadequate management. Industries create and produce inexpensive apparel collections quickly to keep up with the newest trends in fashion. Consequently, the business continuously provides customers with reasonably priced, freshly designed clothing, which encourages the production of textile waste. This raises the rate of landfilling and incineration worldwide when coupled with the absence of solid collection services.
Furthermore impeding the circularity of today’s textiles is their vast range of composition, which includes natural materials like cotton, wool, and linen as well as synthetic polymers like polyester, polyamide, and elastane. All of this suggests that in order to identify the best destination, new methods for separation and sorting must be developed. These days, artificial intelligence is crucial in automating this procedure since it enables more precise and efficient sorting.
But there are other crucial issues facing the textile business besides unchecked production and consumption and the need for distinct technology for gathering and sorting. Innovative and improved recycling techniques are also required to keep up with the volume of textile waste produced globally. Increasing sustainability in the sector will be largely dependent on how well-suited the current recycling technologies are to one another, as explained below.
Union of European Union Strategies
The aforementioned information and the industry’s difficulties have prompted the government to take steps to reorient the sector toward a more sustainable economic model, such as changing the EU Waste Framework Directive. Article 11, paragraph 1 of the May 2018 modification mandates that by January 1, 2025, EU Member States have to establish distinct procedures for collecting textile waste.
The Commission unveiled new unified regulations in July 2023 with the intention of holding producers accountable for the whole life cycle of textile goods and promoting environmentally friendly waste disposal practices across the EU. Stated differently, the Commission recommends that all EU member states impose obligatory Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes for textile goods. With reference to the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, which was established in March 2022, the objective of this effort is to expedite the advancement of separate collection, sorting, reuse and recycling.
When manufacturers are responsible for waste management expenses, EPR systems have been shown to enhance waste management for a range of items, including batteries, electrical and electronic devices, and packaging. When applied to the textile industry, this strategy would stimulate the creation of more sustainable goods at the source and offer manufacturers an incentive to decrease waste output and promote the circularity of textile products.
As stated in Article 9(1) of the amended Framework Directive, the European Commission is considering the effectiveness of procedures for sorting, repair, reuse, and recycling in addition to collecting systems. This sentence was changed to promote repair operations in order to increase the reuse of textile items. In addition, Article 11, paragraph 6 now mandates that by December 31, 2024, the European Commission evaluate and set objectives for becoming ready to reuse and recycle textiles that have been collected separately.
Therefore, in order to attempt to raise the recyclability rates of textile waste, the industry must also address the efficacy and efficiency of the sorting and recycling operations.
Let us talk about the present methods for recycling textiles and the most promising new technologies that technological centers like AIMPLAS are researching, developing, and bringing to market as creative solutions for the sector.
Procedures for Recycling Textiles
Depending on the kind of textile waste stream that has to be handled, many recycling processes may be used in the textile sector. Thus, it is essential to have upstream sorting and separation procedures to guarantee proper recycling techniques.
Among the several technologies are:
Mechanical recycling: This technique turns textiles into useful fibers by using physical forces like cutting and shredding. Following their acquisition, the fibers go through a spinning procedure that includes cleaning, sorting, and aligning the recycled fibers in a parallel fashion before refining and twisting them to create recycled yarn. This is a widely used procedure in the textile industry that is very economical and uses little energy. Depending on the sort of material (natural, synthetic, or mixes), the product type (yarns, textiles, worn clothing, carpets, etc.), and the structure (knitted, woven, or non-woven), it may be used for all types of textile waste. However, there might be a 30–40% drop in fiber length during the ripping, cutting, and shredding operations. This lowers the finished yarn’s quality and restricts its application in new textile products. The industry has responded to this significant difficulty for these recycling methods by combining longer virgin fibers with shorter recovered fibers.
Thermo-Mechanical Recycling: This recycling method melts synthetic fabrics like polyester and polyamide and recovers them as pellets using extrusion procedures that combine precise pressure and temperature conditions. Both cellulose-based synthetics like viscose and natural fibers like cotton and wool are unsuitable for this technique. A well-established process, thermo-mechanical recycling has been used industrially in various industries, such as polymers. For the textile sector, it is less established, however. These methods provide materials of superior quality compared to the ones acquired using the previously mentioned mechanical processes, and they use very less energy. However, input waste standards are highly tight in order for textile waste to be recovered and processed utilizing these methods. When producing a textile with several materials, the composition must be at least 99% mono-material or guarantee 99% compatibility amongst polymers.
For instance, these recycling techniques were used in the OCEANETS project, which was funded by the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and the European Maritime and Fisheries Funds, EASME, and coordinated by AIMPLAS in partnership with the Universidad de Vigo, the Port of Vigo Fishing Shipowners’ Cooperative (ARVI), ECOALF, SINTEX, and Asociación Vertidos Cero. One of the extruders used in these kinds of operations is shown in the photo at the AIMPLAS pilot facility.
Recycling by thermochemistry: Various recycling techniques are used in thermochemical recycling, contingent on the quantity of oxygen utilized throughout the process. The primary goal of pyrolysis, which occurs in the absence of oxygen, is to produce pyrolysis oil, which may be processed to produce new raw materials with a high added value and used as fuel. In other sectors, like plastic waste, pyrolysis is more industrially consolidated. Because polyester, polyamides, and elastanes are so widely available in the textile industry, waste with oxygen in its chemical composition degrades the quality of the oil produced by pyrolysis. For this reason, these technologies are not as widely used in the sector.
Gasification is a process that partially oxidizes polymers to generate synthesis gas, or syngas, with regulated oxygen concentrations. The primary uses for recovered virgin-quality syngas include the production of compounds of industrial importance, including adhesives, methanol, ammonia, synthetic fuels, and oxo alcohols for plasticizers. One fundamental technique that is used on a commercial level is thermochemical recycling. To handle textile waste, this technique has to be modified or improved in a manner similar to that of pyrolysis methods. Since there are less limitations on the quantity of oxygen present in the waste’s chemical composition, the input stream may be even more diverse in this situation.
Chemical Recycling: The primary goal of chemical recycling, which encompasses a broad range of technologies, is to break polymer chains and recover the original monomers using solvents. These methods are referred to as solvolysis. They go by several names, such as glycolysis, hydrolysis, and methanolysis, depending on the kind of solvent utilized. Although chemical recycling methods use more energy than mechanical recycling methods, its main benefit is the production of fibers of a higher caliber that are almost exactly like virgin fibers. Repolymerization of the monomers acquired during the procedure is a prerequisite for the production of chemically recycled fibers. These methods may be used to depolymerize and separate the components of multi-material textiles that are not amenable to these procedures because they are selective for synthetic condensation polymers, such as polyester, polyamides, and polyurethanes.
In this vein, AIMPLAS is working on other initiatives, such as the Textended Project, for which it is in charge of doing research on the solvolysis-based recycling of textile waste, including industrial textile goods and polymer blends like polyester/polyurethane. In actuality, it is also engaged in initiatives to guarantee the use of recycled materials acquired from the textile sector. The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is the project coordinator for Textended, which is supported by the EU. The photo displays the reactors of the AIMPLAS pilot plant, which is used for solvolysis-based chemical recycling processes.
Recycling by dissolving or physical means. Unlike chemical recycling technologies, these recycling methods also include the use of solvents, but in order to recover the original monomers, the polymer chain is not disrupted. Here, textile components are recovered in pulp form (in cellulose materials) or polymer form (in polymeric materials) via dissolving techniques. The latter method, referred to as pulping, recovers cotton in the form of cellulose, enabling it to be regenerated into viscose.
These dissolving methods may also be used to remove the adhesives holding the various layers of multilayer technological textiles together and dissolve the polymers that comprise fabrics. As a result, the layers separate and delaminate, giving the finished fabric its desired technical qualities. Because of this, the layers may be recycled separately, improving the efficacy and efficiency of the process. The reactors seen in the above image are used for this kind of work.
Contaminants and dyes may also be extracted from textile waste using dissolution methods. In keeping with this, AIMPLAS is developing dye-removal techniques for the CISUTAC Project. The goal of this European initiative, which is being led by the Research Institute of Belgium (CENTEXBEL VKC), is to improve textile circularity in Europe by eliminating existing barriers. The goal is to create expansive, sustainable, inventive, and inclusive European value chains in order to reduce the industry’s overall environmental effect. Three pilot programs that concentrate on digital disassembly and repair, novel recycling procedures, and modifications to consumer and industry behavior will be developed in order to accomplish this.
Notwithstanding the complexity of the waste, more has to be treated, and this requires research and development of new recycling technology. Therefore, it is essential to address the unique difficulties facing the business as well as textile waste management. The European Union must also adopt measures to support a more sustainable corporate model, including those mentioned in this article.