More than 20 million tons of waste textiles are recycled every year, "digging treasure" breaks through the bottleneck of reuse

Release time:

2019-09-27

Under the guidance of relevant policies in recent years, China has initially formed an industrial chain of recycling, sorting, dismantling, processing and utilization of waste textiles. Nevertheless, the recycling rate of waste textiles in China is still less than 20%.

Uncontaminated textile waste, old clothing, inferior cotton and other garbage are recyclable;

Uncontaminated waste textiles, such as old clothes, ingredients, spinning, packaging, plastic products, etc., are also recyclable.

But from this we can feel that the amount of waste textiles is beyond our imagination. According to the recently released "white paper on the progress of recycling technology of waste textiles in China", China produces 20 million tons of waste textiles every year.

According to data from the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in the recycling of renewable resources, the recycling value of waste textiles has increased significantly, accounting for more than 50% in 2017. Therefore, how to achieve high-quality recycling of waste textiles is an important topic in the industry, which is also the original intention of the "2019 Green Industry Chain Innovation Forum for High-value Utilization of Waste Textiles" held in May 2019.

Some experts at the meeting agreed that waste textiles are a category missing from the back-end high-value utilization system, and there is an urgent need to study new technologies and new fields to break through the bottleneck of back-end utilization of the industry.

In the realization of high-quality recycling of waste textiles, there have been some innovative practice cases in China. Professor Wu of East China University of Science and Technology has developed fiber-plastic composite materials, which are prepared by using waste textile fibers to reinforce polyolefin modified materials.

According to Professor Wu, this composite material can be recycled many times and can be widely used in industry, agriculture, construction and life, providing a new way for the recycling of waste fiber resources.

In addition, the intelligent functional textile composite material innovation team of the School of Textile Science and Engineering of Xi'an Polytechnic University used waste denim, which was processed and processed many times to make a material similar to a sticky sheet. This material can be used as a thermal insulation material or sound insulation material. On this basis, the new material produced by technical treatment forms a "hard board", which is used to make furniture and replace wood floors.

Associate Professor Fan Wei, the team leader, said that smart wearable textiles with real-time monitoring functions such as heart rate, pulse and human motion status will be welcomed by people. At present, he and his team members have made some smart wearable textiles with piezoelectric fibers.

It is worth noting that innovative "textile" will be more and more integrated into all aspects of life. Some materials and clothing with special functions will be the focus of future research and development, such as wash-free, antibacterial deodorant, moisture absorption and quick drying.

Data show that China has accumulated more and more experience in the resource utilization of waste textiles, and whether it can obtain more innovative clothing raw materials through the resource utilization of waste textiles needs further exploration.

According to rough calculations by the industry, if all waste textiles in my country can be recycled, it is equivalent to saving 24 million tons of crude oil and nearly 1/3 of the cotton planting area each year, and reducing 80 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Especially in promoting the exploration of high-quality recycling of waste textiles, there is no shortcut, only to move forward.

(Source: Environmental Online)

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