Carbon footprint reduction in the textile process chain: Recycling of textile materials

It is an important task of people connected with the textiles and clothing sector to work on the feasible ways to trim down the carbon footprint in each phase of a textile product’s life cycle. One of the possible ways to decipher the reduction of carbon footprint of textiles and clothing sector is to recycle the textile process waste and also to recycle at the end-of-life of textile products and these aspects are exemplified in this paper in detail. Detailed investigation of the possibilities, barriers, challenges to recycle textile waste materials are discussed in this paper with relevant case studies. For recycling of process waste, an example was modelled by recycling the process waste and the carbon footprint results were demonstrated with the aid of 7.3 version of SIMAPRO LCA (Life cycle assessment) software. From the results of this case study, it was understood that recycling of process waste would contribute to the direct reduction of carbon footprint. For the second case of recycling at the end-of-life, there are many barriers and challenges to the textile products to be recycled, which are discussed in detail. For this case, two hypothetical situations were defined and the carbon footprint results of them were modeled and demonstrated with the aid of 7.3 version of SIMAPRO software to illustrate the benefits of recycling to reduce the carbon footprint. Designers need to conisder, “Ecological Design” in design phase to address most of the difficulties faced by recycling of textile products at the end-of-life, which will of certain help to reduce the carbon footprint of the textile products.