Recycled Cotton & Mechanical Recycling questions
Recycled Cotton is a cellulosic fiber which is shredded from left-overs of the garment production process. It is simply the same cotton in biological & characteristic way. It is at the top of the sustainable textile materials. ( for further reading – article – sustainable materials. )
Textile manufacturing left-overs ( textile waste ) – mostly as fabric form – are collected and seperated by their fiber content and colours. Than are turned into fibers again by set of spiked cylinders along the tearing machine.
Recycled Cotton does not use sources as cotton use, such as land, water, sunshine. Also, it does not lose color/dye during recycling so, in further steps colored garments able to be made without dyeing process. ( find out more )
Colours of the fibers come from the textile waste that is made of. So, dyeing process is not involved and all textile colours can be made as well as waste management done properly.
Answer is simply, no. It is all done mechanically.
Pre-consumer is name to “not consumed” such as fabric left-overs on cutting & stiching stage, and post-consumer is already consumed such as second hand clothes. Both should be useless except for recycling, in sustainability point of view.
Up-cycle is to Re-form and Re-use, to create a way without mechanical nor chemical recycling process
Let’s say, we have filters to seperate cotton only than red colours only to produce recycled red cotton fiber, in post-consumer recycling we need extra one filter to remove accessories, labels, buttons, zips, prints, etc. That can not be recycled in tearing machine. It seems only one step but it is quite complicated organisation in todays technology if we imagine all separations are made in manual assistance.
Thanks for innovative people that they have been studying for solutions and they invented dissolvable sewing thread under high temperature. So, all sewed materials and can be seperated from main fabric/garment.
An average t-shirt weight is 200 gr and approximately 50 gr fabric, thread is wasted during its production, that suitable to be recycled. ( find out more )
Except collecting and sorting, chemical recycling produce polymers for fiber/yarn production using chemistry. Mechanical recycling produce fibers directly from scraps by tearing them.
Circularity & Sustainability questions
Fashion is; being very popular in a period of time, in a place. Generally, it is related to textile products. On the other-hand, sustainability is; the idea that goods and services should be produced in ways that do not use resources that cannot be replaced – such as crude oil or clean water – and that do not damage the environment.
We always have solutions to produce in sustainable methods and materials that would be answer to yes, fashion can be sustainable. Electric car is a good example for it.
We should consider, which are not. The materials with the high resource consumption and the unreplacable resources. Most of man-made fibers technology is not sustainable in mass production so, there is an option for recycling of PET battles to recycled PES or poliamid bags to recycled poliamid ( known as Nylon) for instance. ( link – blog/sustainable materials )
To be accredited as responsible and ethical,
To use more sustainable materials,
To consume more sustainable energy than before,
To use less polluting methods in production. ( for further read )
It seems both of them are not sustainable enough that sustainability is the main focus for fashion industry. Fiber consumption is increasing %4 annualy. On the otherhand, to keep the balance between supply and demand, production methods are not sustainable too. ( for further read )
Sustainable fashion does not only depend on materials used. Also, during the process everything involved should be sustainable as well. This means to; responsible to people, network, knowledge, planet.
There is not exact number for it but average 2.000 litres of water is used to produce 200 gr of %100 cotton t-shirt. ( for further read )
App. 10 kg CO2 and other greenhouse gases – that is the Product Carbon Footprint of a t-shirt made of 100 % cotton and a net weight of 200 grams. The Carbon Footprint is 50 times higher than the net weight of the t-shirt. In other words, it is equivalent to a 40 kilometer drive by average car.