Finnish research bodies say textile waste project can “revolutionise” industry
17/05/2016
More than three million tonnes of textiles are thrown away in the EU every year, the Finnish researchers have said, and this volume is growing. Project leaders believe they can solve the problem by recycling the waste and using it to develop high-performance fibres. As part of the project, they began a search for techniques to spin, knit, sew or design “innovative high-quality products” from used textiles.
VTT’s research professor, Ali Harlin, has said that if the project can find a way of using “ecological technologies” to do this, it will provide “an opportunity for revolutionising European textile manufacturing and trade”. VTT and Aalto University’s contribution will be to try to develop “efficient, ecological” techniques for pre-processing and washing waste textiles and separating the fibres out for reuse.
They have identified a process called Ioncell-F as “especially suitable” for recycling cellulose waste, describing it as a robust and stable process that makes it possible to manufacture textile fibres “of the highest quality even from low-quality wastes”. It even makes it possible to separate out the cellulosic fibres in blends with polyester while preserving the macromolecular structure of polyester for further use.
VTT is to focus on breaking down the fibres in waste textiles and making them suitable for the process, while the Ioncell cellulose fibre manufacturing process itself will be carried out at Aalto University.
The Trash-2-Cash project is part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, and will run from 2015 until 2018. The total budget is €8.9 million, of which EU funding accounts for €7.9 million. The project team includes 18 organisations from 10 EU countries. The project is coordinated by SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. In addition to VTT and Aalto University, Finnish participants include the children’s clothing manufacturer Reima. The project won the H&M Foundation Global Change Award in February 2016.
Image, courtesy VTT, shows new fibres made from old jeans.
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