Debate

Global clothing consumption is 400% more than the amount consumed two decades earlier.

Textile production is the world’s second most polluting industry second to the oil industry
accounting for approximately 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions

Approaches the textile and clothing industry can adopt to overcome the challenges it is facing,
for its survival in the new, strict, and upcoming green circular economy.

Fiber production: dominated by synthetic fiber

two major categories; natural and synthetic fibers

Natural fibers are those that exist in nature such as cotton, wool, sisal, silk, and others,
whereas synthetic fibers include fibers like polyester,nylon, acrylic, and others Synthetic fibers
are non biodegradable. They can stay in the environment for many years.

There is an urgent need to switch from such a linear economy to a circular economy to address
the challenges

Getting fibers back to the circular loop

Fibers make almost 98% of finished clothing. The 73% of fibers used in clothing ends up either
in landfill or an incinerator with only 12% recycled

Fibers are small and are exposed to rough processes during recycling which damages their
quality, and thus only 1% of the recycled fiber can be utilized again in clothing.

As a solution, new fibers can be readily blended with old recycled fibers to strike the right
balance between quality and sustainability.

Overall, it is simplistic to state that clothing are easy to recycle --clothes are complex to recycle

Solvent technologies can be subdivided into two as follows: (1) Dissolving the dissolvable and
remain with the undissolvable and (2) high temperature heating which dissolves one fiber and
leaves the other fiber behind as solid.

Biosorting This concept attempts to utilize living organisms or enzymes to consume part of the
fibers and leaving behind the other.

Reuse and repurpose of clothing

Resale and rental approach

Environmental problems related to the product life-cycle stages in textile
production
Energy consumption: Production of man-made fibers, yarn manufacturing, finishing processes,
the washing and drying of clothes in the use phase

Water and chemicals consumption:fiber growth, wet pre-treatment, dyeing, finishing and
laundry. To make a single cotton t-shirt are required 2,700 litres of water

Solid waste: Mainly the disposal of products at the end of their life, textile/clothing
manufacturing. Textile production is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of global clean
water pollution from dyeing and finishing products. Washing synthetics releases an estimated
0.5 million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean a year.

Direct CO2 emissions: Transportation within globally dispersed supply chains It is estimated
that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions.

Environmental problems related to the product life-cycle stages in plastic

production
Today, we produce about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. Only a small fraction
of plastic waste is economically or technically viable to recycle (representing a mere 9% of all
the plastic ever produced).

Energy consumption: production of virgin polymers and at the stage of processing polymers
into a finished product.

Water and Chemicals consumption: heavy metals, flame retardants, phthalates, bisphenols,
and fluorinated compounds – are directly associated with plastics production.

It takes 22 gallons of water to make one pound of plastic.

In fact, it takes at least twice as much water to produce a plastic water bottle as the amount of
water contained in the bottle. The water footprint of one pound of cotton is 1,320 gallons.
That equals over 650 gallons of water for one new cotton t-shirt.

Solid Waste: e majority of plastic waste enters the environment (via landfill or marine and
terrestrial litter).

Direct CO2 emissions: aproximately 108 million metric tons of CO2e per year are attributable
to plastic production, mainly from extraction and refining.

The production of synthetic fibres requires large amounts of energy and is a significant
contributor to climate change and the depletion of fossil fuel resources.

Sites:

https://www.bain.com/insights/circularity-challenge-expect-disruption-and-get-out-in-front-
of-it/?gclid=CjwKCAiA68ebBhB-EiwALVC-
NnaeoLf9VqynTJVA1_ejRqxs4sHIGOpbgt9y334Siz13DRaHcqWjcxoCTUkQAvD_BwE
https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/plastics-and-the-
environment/

https://www.ciel.org/the-toxic-impacts-of-plastic-across-its-lifecycle/

https://www.watercalculator.org/footprint/the-hidden-water-in-everyday-products/

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20201208STO93327/the-impact-
of-textile-production-and-waste-on-the-environment-infographic

Environmental impact of recycling plastic textiles

Getting fibers back to the circular loop

Fibers make almost 98% of finished clothing. The 73% of fibers used in clothing ends up either
in landfill or an incinerator with only 12% recycled

Fibers are small and are exposed to rough processes during recycling which damages their
quality, and thus only 1% of the recycled fiber can be utilized again in clothing.

As a solution:

New fibers can be readily blended with old recycled fibers to strike the right balance between
quality and sustainability.

In the case of synthetics, such as polyester, the fibers can be chemically broken down to their
chemical building blocks and later melt-spun into new fibers with exactly similar properties as
the new virgin fibers entering the circular loop. Unfortunately, chemical fiber recycling has
proven to be expensive, resulting in fibers that are far expensive than considering new virgin
fibers.

Solvent technologies can be subdivided into two as follows:

 Dissolving the dissolvable and remain with the undissolvable

 high temperature heating which dissolves one fiber and leaves the other fiber behind
as solid.

Biosorting This concept attempts to utilize living organisms or enzymes to consume part of the
fibers and leaving behind the other.

Reuse and repurpose of clothing

Resale and rental approach

Appling recycled polyester in textiles

Polyester is the most widely used fiber worldwide. 55 million tons of polyester fibers were
produced in 2018. It represents 52 % of global fiber production. So the implementation of
recycled polyester in the textile industry will contribute to a more efficient and
environmentally friendlily option resulting in huge energy savings (of up to 45%) during the
fibre production process compared to virgin polyester. Choosing recycled polyester over its
virgin counterpart also means a 20% reduction in water consumption and 30% less CO2
emissions, it will also prevents plastic from ending up in landfills, incinerators, or oceans
Recycled polyester (rPET) is a synthetic textile fiber and is obtained by melting the plastic and
trimming it into one new polyester fiber.

Recycled polyester it has the same characteristics as virgin polyester, but requires fewer
resources to be produced and appears to be the same as virgin polyester in terms of quality,
but its production requires 59% less energy than virgin polyester .

Disadvantages

Fabrics in 100% polyester they cannot be recycled forever