Textile Recycling: Just hype or the next big thing?
The transition to a circular economy has placed textile recycling firmly in the spotlight. In the Nova talks on Textile Recycling: quo vadis? Just a hype or the next big thing? discussion, experts from Valmet and The Institute for Textile Technology (ITA) at RWTH Aachen University explored whether textile recycling is truly ready to scale or still facing fundamental challenges.
In her presentation Heli Kangas, Development Manager for textile recycling at Valmet, covered the drivers, challenges and opportunities in textile recycling and Valmet’s solutions for fiber-to-fiber textile recycling: “We have several financial and environmental drivers supporting textile recycling driven by the circular economy. Especially in EU the legislation is supporting textile recycling, but we need to be honest that there is some uncertainty in the legislation”
“Textile recycling is a global challenge and several solutions are needed. In my opinion mechanical and chemical recycling are not competing with each other, both are needed in the fight to reduce textile waste. We have technical solutions available, but challenge in many cases is the scale-up and needs for example risk sharing between the different parties in the value chain.”
Melina Sachtleben Dahlmann, Research Assistant at ITA, presented the operations of ITA and focused especially on material sorting processes and the importance of designing textiles for recycling. “Traditionally every textile is sorted by hand, which is expensive. In the past years automation in the sorting process is being developed.”
Both speakers agreed that the answer to the opening questions is not either or – technologies for textile recycling exist and continue to be developed further, but there are also barriers and increasing regularity pressure, industry commitment and investment funding is needed.
You can watch the recording of the event online:
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