before buying a new clothes; is wise to check on your closet, some of it can be recycled or passed on charity causes before you add the new ones, this little steps help to reduce amount of clothing that being dumped away to be ended up in landfill.
what's the problem in recycling clothes!?
sorting out textiles into different type of fibres and materials by hand sorting technique is labour intensive, slow and require a a skilled worker.
after sorting, dyes on fabric needed to be removed before the yarns can be recycled into new made fabric.
some of these are:
old wool jumpers can be turned into carpets whereas cashmeres can be turned into suits.
however, only 1% out of 13 Million Tonnes of unwanted fabric are being recycled into this purpose.
this innovative idea of recycling fabric is founded by Lin; chemical engineer of Hong Kong University; which is recycling cotton/polyester blend fabric by feeding them to fungi.
Aspergillus Niger; the fungi that formed black cloudy mold often found on grapes that produced an enzyme that breàk down the cotton fibre into glucose that slowly formed into a syrup.
then, the remaining pure polyester that left can be reused to make a new clothing. this new formed fabric is called poly cotton blends a popular fabrics to create a new line of cheaper cost high end clothings like shirts, jeans and more.
later on, the same group expand this concept into larger scale by using industrial produced cellulose enzymes to recycle cotton and cotton blend fabrics and new form fabrics has been a major materials for clothing line including ZARA and H&M.
for the future note however, clothing line manufacturer all over the world need to take a precautious measure in choosing kind of fabric that is recyclable friendly to create their clothing line; for the future of fabric recycling should not be an issue after their life span is ended or being dumped for some other reason.
