Breakthrough: Fabric Recycling For Polyester-Cotton Blends

99 percent of the 113 million tons of textiles produced each year end up in landfills or are incinerated because there is no effective way to separate the fibres for recycling. But that's about to change.

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam have developed a large-scale fabric recycling method. The technique fully separates polyester and cotton from blended textiles, making it possible to recycle both materials efficiently. This could be what the fashion industry desperately needs to tackle its growing waste crisis.

Existing methods either require extreme heat or expensive multi-step processes or only recycle one component while destroying the other. This means most blended fabrics are downcycled into low-value products like furniture stuffing or simply discarded.

Without going into the technical details on how the new large-scale fabric recycling method from the University of Amsterdam performs its task, it most definitely looks set to change the recycling game for blended polyester and cotton textiles. The process achieves a closed-loop recycling system in which both polyester and cotton can be reused instead of wasted, as reported in ScienceAdvances.

This is not just about keeping clothes out of landfills. It is about transforming the entire textile industry. Textile production is responsible for a whopping 10 percent of global carbon emissions. That is more than international flights and maritime shipping combined.

This new method could reduce emissions, conserve resources, and lessen our dependence on virgin materials by making recycling easier and more efficient.

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