Karl Mayer offers recyclable stretch fabric
The textiles development department at German machinery group Karl Mayer has produced a new polyester-based fabric with stretch that it says offers an answer to waste textile.
It quoted a study by fashion label Labfresh that said in Germany alone, 390,000 tonnes of textile waste are produced every year.
It said: “A key reason contributing to the low recycling rate is the purity of the material. Many clothing textiles consist of fibre or yarn mixtures that cannot be separated for the treatment process or can only be separated with great difficulty.”
The new textile is made from yarns of different polyester polymers: a semi-dull version for a soft look and a bicomponent fibre that offers moderate mechanical elasticity with a well-thought-out structure. The elements of the stretchable fibre consist of different polymers and show different shrinkage behaviour: when heated, a spiral crimp is formed. As the bulky deformation is not mechanically induced – unlike in textured yarns – it produces a more permanent and pronounced elongation in comparison.
The two polyester yarns were processed into a dense fabric on a HKS 3-M tricot machine. It said clothing made from it is comfortable, easy to wash, does not need to be ironed and can be recycled.
