Recycling of Fabrics and Fibres!

Lifecycle of a Recycled Product! Old products are taken to charity shops, recycling banks etc. You purchase a textiles product. The fabric is cleaned and sorted. Good quality items can be sold in charity shops or sent abroad to be reused. Items which are unusable are sorted according to colour and type of fabric. The fabric is shredded. The fabric can be used as wiping cloths or stuffing for furniture. The fabric is re-spun and made into new items.

Charity Shops! Charity shops are places where used textiles products can be taken to be resold for the benefit of a specific charity. The clothes sold are at a much cheaper price than the original recommended retail price, but they do not have any extra costs for production etc. so are just making a profit. These shops ensure that products do not end up in a landfill, and volunteers sort through the bags left as donations to see which products can be reused in their current form and which should be remade into a new product. Environmentalists may prefer shopping at charity shops as it uses fewer natural resources and does less damage to the environment, as there is less waste in landfills and less pollution due to transportation. Overall this gives products a ‘second-life’ for the impact they create on the environment.

Second-Hand Markets! Throughout many developing nations there are various second-hand markets, known as ‘mitumba’ markets in Swahili. These provide the people of the countries with affordable clothes which are fashionable and desirable, at a very low price. These are obviously not as environmentally friendly as selling in a local charity shop, with all the transportation costs, but are also more beneficial for the people in the developing countries as well. The clothes can be donated in a similar way to recycling materials. There are often large donation points in urban areas to encourage the local residents to donate, and occasionally charity shops hold special events to promote donations especially for overseas reselling.

Reproducing Textiles! If textiles products are too damaged to reuse in their current state they can be shredded and the fibres can be used to create new products. Fibre reclamation mills grade incoming materials into type of fibre and colours. The colour sorting ensures no extra dyeing has to take place, saving on the chemicals and pollutants from many dyes. Textiles are shredded into "shoddy" fibres and blended with other selected fibres, depending on the intended end use of the recycled yarn. The blended mixture is carded to clean and mix the fibres and spun ready for weaving or knitting. The fibres can also be compressed for mattress production and stuffing. Textiles sent to the flocking industry are shredded to make filling material for car insulation, roofing felts, loudspeaker cones, panel linings and furniture padding.

Wastage! Fibres which don’t get recycled almost always end up in landfills. This is obviously a waste of resources as the products which end up here could have been used to create new products. The new products created then also have a much greater impact on the environment, with chemicals, transportation and the sources of the fabric.