Can clothes be really recycled?
According to statistical data, more than 100 billion clothes are produced over the world every year. More than half of them, more precisely about 65%, are unused and end up in landfills, according to a study by BBC.
On the Baltic Sea coast in Sweden, in the city of Sundsvall – home to the pulp and paper industry in the country– a team of scientists, chemists, entrepreneurs and textile manufacturers have been vigorously fighting against this negative trend.
Local pulp firm Renewcell opened the first textile-to-textile chemical recycling plant in the world a couple of months ago after spending nearly 10 years developing the technology.
The ambition of the entire team is to recycle 1.4 billion T-shirts annually by 2030. Currently, the result is 1/3 of the goal set for 7 years from now on.
The CEO of the company claims adamantly that we, humans, cannot waste all the resources of the Earth by using cotton fibers just once or pumping oil to make polyester in large quantities.
The statistics shows that only 1% of recycled clothes are turned back into new clothes. The new plant marks the beginning of an era of significant changes in the ability to recycle clothing.
There is another similar example from England where efforts are focused on mixed and synthetic materials - most often used by fast fashion brands.
Worn Again Technologies, based in Nottingham, is going to build a textile recycling plant in Winterthur, Switzerland. It will be for difficult-to-recycle fabric blends, such as polyester and cotton clothes. The plant shall open by the end of 2024 and the ambitions of the company are for as many as 40 plants by 2040.
Source: Vbox7.com
