PUMA less reliant on bottles for recycled jerseys
October 1st, 2024
Global sports company PUMA has scaled up its textile-to-textile recycling innovation RE:FIBRE, creating millions of replica football jerseys with a minimum of 75% recycled textile waste and other waste material. Image: Business Wire Global sports company PUMA has scaled up its textile-to-textile recycling innovation RE:FIBRE, creating millions of replica football jerseys with a minimum of […]
Luxe packaging made from cotton textile waste
October 1st, 2024
Paper made from pre-consumer cotton scraps is recycled into packaging such as gift bags (above), decorative storage bins, journals, biodegradable urns, desk sets and gift boxes by Preserve Brands. The products support jobs for papermaking artisans in rural areas in India. Image: Preserve Brands Preserve Brands of Charlestown, Mass., has released Idealitee™, luxury cotton paper […]
Gen Phoenix aircraft seats designed for recycling
October 1st, 2024
Being able to recycle all parts of an aircraft seat, from seat cover to cushion to frame, meant taking that goal into consideration from the start of the design. Gen Phoenix aims to have the recycled seat covers available early next year. Image: Gen Phoenix and Doy Design Gen Phoenix, of Peterborough, England, recently unveiled […]
Södra, Lenzing AG repurpose polyester-cotton fiber waste
August 1st, 2024
A log stacker working in the timber yard at Södra Wood Värö in Väröbacka, Sweden. Image: © Södra Skogsägarna/Malin Arnesson Lenzing AG, a specialty fiber supplier headquartered in Lenzing, Austria, and Södra, a Swedish forest-owner association, jointly developed OnceMore®, a process that enables the recycling of polyester-cotton fiber blends to make textile pulp. Södra’s pulp […]
Recyclable carpet with lower amounts of flame retardants
August 1st, 2024
Pictured is a reactor in the polymer pilot plant of the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF) in Denkendorf, Germany. Image: DITF The German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF) and the Institut für Bodensysteme (Institute for Soil Systems, or TFI) have developed a concept that reduces the number of flame retardants […]
Textile recycling confronts hurdles of cost, scalability
August 1st, 2024
At the Sweden-based Siptex textile recycling facility, the sorting machines use near-infrared and visual spectroscopy to take mixed textile waste and sort the items by fiber type. These bales are ready for their next processing step, whether that’s chemical or mechanical recycling. Image: Siptex Textile waste is a massive problem throughout the world. The European […]
AI enables customization of enzymes to recycle plastic waste
March 1st, 2024
Protein Evolution uses artificial intelligence to determine the correct enzymes to recycle textile and plastic waste into fresh materials. The first garment made with the biologically recycled polyester process by Protein Evolution Inc., a “parachute” parka, was on display at the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) in December in Dubai, United […]
Honda workers give the shirts off their backs
December 1st, 2023
Shredded worker uniforms find a new use in vehicles as insulation. Image: Honda Honda is working toward becoming 100% carbon neutral and using only sustainable materials and clean energy by 2050—goals that require creative recycling solutions. One initiative already in practice repurposes old worker uniforms, transforming the textiles into sound-absorbing insulation used in vehicles, keeping […]
Gingerbread ingredient could recycle cotton-poly blends
November 1st, 2023
A polyester fabric dress is being cut up into small pieces and put in a container with hartshorn salt and a mild solvent. Chemists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark have learned that an Old World leavening agent used in gingerbread can separate cotton-poly blended fibers. The baking ingredient hartshorn salt, also known as […]
Mattress textiles could be used to make EV batteries
August 1st, 2023
In a three-year study at the National Institute for Materials Advancement at Pittsburg State University (PSU) in Kansas, researchers led by Ram Gupta, Ph.D., developed a process that transforms mattress textiles into conductive carbon materials used to make the anodes and cathodes in lithium-sulfur rechargeable batteries. These next-generation electric vehicle (EV) lithium-sulfur batteries have two […]