Textile recycling: giving old clothes a new life

The production and disposal of textile products present a real threat to the health of our planet. Producing new textile materials is an energy- and water-intensive process, depleting natural resources and emitting carbon. Equally, once textiles reach the end of their lives, they are often landfilled or incinerated, both of which release pollutants.

To avoid this, as well as encouraging consumers to extend the lives of their textiles, efforts are being made by the textile industry to recycle products, generating new textiles from manufacturing and consumer waste and low-value materials.

Jinsong Shen, a Professor of Textile Chemistry and Biotechnology at De Montfort University, has partnered with Loughborough University and industry (Camira Fabrics, The Woolmark Company and Fox Brothers & Co Ltd) to contribute towards this mission. In a BBSRC-funded project, as part of the Circular Bioeconomy fund, Professor Shen is studying how enzymes can be used to create surface patterns on fabrics, repair damaged wool fibres and separate wool-blended fabrics into their constituent fibres so that they can be more easily reused.

The effort to separate wool-blended fibres has proven successful, establishing the potential for their reuse in the textile industry. Alongside this, the project has successfully demonstrated that dyes can be recovered from waste textiles and reused for textile colouration.

Professor Shen says: “This research paves the way for more efficient and effective recycling of textiles. It provides a potential solution to the challenges associated with blended textiles and contributes to the development of sustainable and circular practices in the textile industry.”