TEXTILES.ORG
Reducing waste lessens Earth’s environmental burden and landfill problem, but it also can save and earn money.
Textile waste costs money and adds to the cost of production. A company’s economic efficiency can be enhanced by capitalizing on usable waste in both natural-fiber and technical-fiber areas of the industry, including aramids. Increased product realization from what previously was waste aids the bottom line, and this added value can be recaptured throughout textile processing.
Raw material quality affects value
The price of raw materials, which can affect the overall price of the final product by as much as 70%, impacts the profitability of the manufacturing sector. Therefore, the quality of raw materials must be at the forefront
of manufacturing.
Natural-fiber spinning mills have an increased risk of procuring raw material contaminated with plastic from bale wrap or other plastic trash that may enter a field. In natural-fiber textile processing, the removal of foreign matter, which may or may not be reusable, is mandatory. Nestling Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. of Coimbatore, India, is developing vision-based technologies to segregate plastic and other trash from cotton, beginning with ginning and continuing through the textile manufacturing process.
“Trash not detected earlier in cotton bales translates into several meters in yarns and fabrics, costing a fortune for the industry,” says Somasundaram Chandrasekaran, managing director of Nestling Technologies.
Right now, cotton producers in the textile industry are focused on reducing plastic contamination in cotton bales. This increases the value of a bale to a textile mill.
“Saw-ginned cotton, as is the case with the United States’ cotton industry, has trash less than 1.5%, while Indian cotton may have trash of about 3%–4%, hence additional cleaning points are needed,” says Velmurugan Shanmugam, general manager of Aruppukkottai, India-based Jayalakshmi Textiles.
India is a leading producer of cotton but also imports cotton. The Indian spinning sector is looking at importing from a leading exporter such as the U.S. due to its cleanliness—provided the price is competitive with domestic cotton.
Opportunities throughout processing
Shanmugam says that high-quality waste such as comber noils and fibers from flat strips of the carding process are used in spinning coarse yarns for manufacturing home textiles, and many home textile products have recycled and postindustrial waste.
In the spinning process, recovering usable fibers from waste can lead to increased profit. According to Kanthimathinathan Aramvalarthanathan, a textile consultant based in Coimbatore, about 40% of waste from blow room and carding and 25% from flat strips in the carding process can be recovered and consumed as useful fiber. Among different wastes recovered, comber noil is routinely used as recycled fiber in open-end yarn spinning, and these yarns find applications in home textiles such as bedsheets.
“With an increase of 1% in yarn realization, our cotton spinning mill with an average count of 70s Ne [Number English count] can enhance its profit by 10 million Indian rupees [nearly $116,000],” says Shanmugam.
The home textiles sector provides good opportunities for export to Europe and the U.S. from textile exporters such as India and Bangladesh.
Upcycling ingenuity
Textile waste from conventional textile mills can be translated into value-added textiles. Textile mills’ sweeping waste can be made into bonded mats that can find applications such as oil-absorbent kitchen mats and oven mitts and other eco-friendly technical textile products.
For example, Jayalakshmi Textiles has used cotton waste and natural binders to develop recycled material that can be reused multiple times, such as in products that can help clean up oil spills or coveralls laden with oil and toxic chemicals.
Pioneering efforts by the Central Institute of Research on Cotton Technology (ICAR-CIRCOT) in Mumbai, India, have resulted in converting cotton stalks into hard boards. In some countries, it is normal practice to burn the stalks. The technology developed at ICAR-CIRCOT prevents particulate air pollution that occurs when stalks are burned.
In textile mills where natural fibers and their blends form the bulk of the waste, eliminating synthetic waste both during processing and after use provides additional challenges. Additional costs are incurred for the disposal of nonbiodegradable materials and functional chemicals. In a spinning mill, recyclable and reusable textile waste from the blending room to the winding ranges 15%–25%. Finding ways to reduce, reuse and recycle this waste reduces expense and potentially adds revenue.
Opportunities in recycling technical textiles
The advanced textiles sector is based on synthetic fibers, so the costs of recycling and environmental burdens are higher than the natural fibers industry. The technical textile sector also has a larger carbon footprint. Consequently, current efforts are to minimize and eliminate waste and its accompanying costs. While these practices can be burdensome, they can also provide opportunities, such as creating new jobs and developing innovative technologies for reusing and recycling postindustrial and postconsumer waste.
The advanced textiles industry is slow to adopt recycling and reuse practices, but there are multiple opportunities for the industry to embrace. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need to evolve standards and develop standard operating policies to reuse personal protective equipment (PPE). While it is not possible to completely replace synthetics in the world of advanced textiles, effective processes for reducing, reusing and recycling need to be developed.
Among the different subsegments in the technical textiles sector, the protective textiles industry occupies a prominent place, including antiballistic, flame-resistant materials and various kinds of PPE. The use of recycled materials in this sector is in its infancy. But General Recycled Ltd., based in Val-des-Sources, Que., Canada, is endeavoring to change this landscape by recycling flame-resistant meta- and para-aramids so these companies can have their own closed-loop recycling systems, for example, those developing products that oil and gas sectors in the energy industry can use.
“Some companies do not see value in recycling,” says Dave Kasper, vice president of sales at General Recycled. But by assisting major multinational companies in developing closed-loop systems, General Recycled helps them reduce their carbon footprint. In addition, the company has its own carbon reduction efforts. Its manufacturing facility in Val-des-Sources uses renewable hydroelectric power, which makes its operation carbon neutral.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, cities globally are expected to produce 2.2 billion metric tons (2.4 billion U.S. tons) of waste annually by 2025. Given the economic, environmental and health impacts of waste, the textile industry must reduce, reuse and recycle waste to avoid increasing production costs.
Seshadri Ramkumar, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University.