Upcycling Textile Wastes Challenges and Innovations

Textile Progress
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Upcycling textile wastes: challenges and

innovations
Zunjarrao Kamble & Bijoya Kumar Behera
To cite this article: Zunjarrao Kamble & Bijoya Kumar Behera (2021) Upcycling
textile wastes: challenges and innovations, Textile Progress, 53:2, 65-122, DOI:
10.1080/00405167.2021.1986965
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Textile Progress
2021, VOL. 53, NO. 2, 65–122
https://doi.org/10.1080/00405167.2021.1986965
Upcycling textile wastes: challenges and innovations

Zunjarrao Kamble and Bijoya Kumar Behera
Department of Textile and Fibre Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New
Delhi, India
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Food, shelter and clothing are three basic necessities of life. Textiles Received 4 April 2021
are necessary for human beings to cover and protect the body Accepted 8 September 2021
from different weather conditions. In the household, textiles are KEYWORDS
used in carpeting, furnishing, window shades, towels, table covers, Textile waste;
bed sheets, handkerchiefs, cleaning devices and in art. In the recycling;
workplace, they are used in industrial and scientific processes such upcycling;
as tents, flags, nets, kites, sails, parachutes and filtering. Technical life-cycle assessment;
textiles are used for industrial purposes – for automotive applica- sustainability;
tions, medical textiles (e.g. implants, personal protective equipment composites
and clothing, wound care and compression), geotextiles (stabili-
sation; reinforcement of embankments), agrotextiles, protective
clothing (e.g. against heat and radiation for fire-retardant clothing,
against molten metals for welders, stab protection, and bullet
proof vests), packaging and for making advanced materials like
composites. In the case of apparel, ‘fast fashion’ has led to increased
consumption of textiles and thereby increased textile waste, which
poses a great challenge to today’s world in terms of unsustainable
disposal. Textile waste has also become a greater threat to modern
society mainly because of constant growth in the production and
consumption of non-biodegradable synthetic fibres. Unless ade-
quately treated, textile wastes from hospitals may carry hazardous
pathogens whilst many fashion clothing items contain non-bio-de-
gradable chemicals which can create havoc in the environment
following their disposal, so the recycling of waste textiles has
grown in importance. Many studies have shown that much of
what would otherwise become waste textiles could be successfully
upcycled to produce value-added products. However, the true
potential of waste textiles is not yet realized due to many reasons,
such as the lack of an adequate textile waste management system,
the complexity of the required treatment of some types of textile
materials (fibre blends or mixed-fibre textiles) and poor organisa-
tion and control over supply chains. This issue of Textile Progress
reports on research into the generation of textile waste, its detailed
classification, the global textile market, and the environmental
impacts of waste textiles. The various challenges in textile waste
management and the application of techniques of upcycling waste
textiles are critically examined and ways of utilising waste textiles
to produce upcycled products are explored.
CONTACT Bijoya Kumar Behera B.K.Behera@textile.iitd.ac.in

© 2022 The Textile Institute
66 Z. KAMBLE AND B. K. BEHERA
1. Introduction
The twenty-first century will be considered a highly-destructive period for the planet
if we fail to take proper action on efficient energy and water utilization, pollution
control, and waste management. According to a World Bank report, the projected
amounts of global municipal solid waste generation in 2030 and 2050 are 2.59 and
3.4 billion tonnes, respectively (Kaza, Yao, Bhada-Tata, & Van Woerden, 2018). The
municipal solid waste collection rates for high-income, upper-middle-income,
lower-middle-income, and low-income countries are 96, 82, 51, and 39%, respectively
and whereas around 40% of global solid waste ends at landfills, about 19% of waste
is recovered through recycling and composting (Kaza et al., 2018). Unfortunately,
textile waste is not categorized as an independent category of waste in municipal
solid waste everywhere, and that is particularly the case in developing countries
where it is classed together with plastic or glass, or other types of wastes. However,
textile waste is an important category of waste and deserves special attention because
the continual development of regenerated and synthetic fibres, new functional finishes
and finishing techniques, ranges of dyes, stitching styles and fashion demands, devel-
opments and automation of textile manufacturing machines for higher production
and reduced costs contribute to increased textile consumption (Wang, 2006). The
average annual consumption of textiles per person increased from 7 kg in 1992 to
13 kg in 2013 (Kamble, Behera, Mishra, & Behera, 2021). As consumption of textiles
increased, the corresponding textile waste also increased due to the linear model of
the textile economy, namely: take-make-waste, and also because there is no sophis-
ticated textile waste management system in many countries.
It has been predicted that the total textile waste in the year 2030 would be
148 million tonnes, which comes to around 17.5 kg per capita per year across the
planet. More than 150 million tonnes of clothing are projected to be landfilled or
burned in 2050 (Kerr & Landry, 2017), but about 95% of the textiles that are land-
filled each year could be reused or recycled (EDGE, n.d.). According to the Council
for Textile Recycling, 11.34 million tonnes of municipal solid textile waste is gen-
erated every year in the USA (Council for Textile Recycling, n.d.) and around 0.3
million tonnes of used clothing is being landfilled in 2016 in the UK (Smithers,
2017). The European textile industry generates 16 million tonnes per year of textile
waste (EASME, n.d.) whilst Brazil produces 0.175 million tonnes of textile industry
residue per year (Zontti, Maria, Guimarães, Duleba, & Ramos, 2015), hence it can
be seen that textile waste management is a huge challenge for the entire world.
Today, with the quantity of textile waste increasing, we need to switch from the
linear model of the textile economy (take, make, waste) to a circular one, which
is expected to take greater care not only of businesses and society, but also,
importantly, the environment. However, the approaches and technologies to
develop a circular economy should be planned in such a manner that it will benefit
both the environment and all of the people who will become part of that economy,
otherwise it would be unlikely to achieve its primary objectives.
The differences between various textiles waste management-related terminologies
(Source Reduction, Reusing, Recycling, and Upcycling) need to be understood.
Textile Progress 67
i. Source Reduction refers to reducing clothing accumulation by promoting cloth-

ing exchange among people to avoid unnecessary purchases (Kim, Jung, &
Lee, 2021). Source reduction is the most sustainable way of textile waste
management. However, individualism and the emotional value of clothing to
consumers influence the use of exchanged textiles (Kim et al., 2021).
ii. Reusing textile waste is about prolonging the life of a textile product (with or
without any transformation) by repair, exchange, renting through second-hand
shops, online market sales and charities (Sandin & Peters, 2018).
iii. Textile recycling refers to the reprocessing of waste textiles to develop new
textile or non-textile products by mechanical, chemical, or thermal means
(Muthu, 2014; Sandin & Peters, 2018).
iv. Upcycling refers to a product produced using recycled material in such a way
that the new item commands a higher value or quality than the original prod-
uct (Sandin & Peters, 2018).
Whatever waste management method is applied it should be selected on the basis

also of an understanding of that particular method’s own carbon footprints.
2. Classification of textile wastes

Figure 1 shows the detailed classification of different types of textile wastes, but
usefully, textile wastes can be more-broadly categorized as pre-consumer and
post-consumer wastes.
The textile wastes generated during textile manufacturing are pre-consumer
wastes. A huge quantity of pre-consumer waste gets generated during various textile
manufacturing processes such as fibre and yarn spinning, fabric manufacturing,
yarns, and fabric’s chemical processing. Pre-consumer waste is of two types: process
Figure 1. Classification of textile wastes.

waste and incidental waste (Majumdar, Das, Alagirusamy, & Kothari, 2013). The
process waste is considered to be unavoidable, whereas the incidental waste is
regraded avoidable. Process waste is associated with the type of machine and pro-
cess and its so-called ‘unavoidable waste’ is however, generated due to poor material
handling, work practices, quality of packages, deviation in production parameters,
faulty machines, mechanisms, substandard raw materials (Bandyopadhyay, Pawar,
Mehta, & Huddar, 1991; Haque & Majumder, 2018; Lawrence, 2010; Majumdar et al.,
2013; Patti, Cicala, & Acierno, 2020; Pensupa et al., 2017; Senthil Kumar, 2014;
Wang, 2010).
The textiles that have served their useful life or the consumer has thrown away
after a certain number of wearings are post-consumer wastes (Ellen Macarthur
Foundation, 2015; Wang, 2010). Post-consumer waste varies from country to country
due to differences in the living standards of people. Hospital textile waste, such as
single-use disposable medical gowns, masks, and antiseptic wipes is also one of the
major post-consumer wastes after the apparel waste. A notable amount of textile
waste is generated during garment manufacturing, which is a post-fabric-manufac-
turing process, and therefore categorized here as post-industrial waste. Further, Çeken,
Erdoğan, Kayacan, and Uğurlu (2012) reported that textile secondary raw materials
are yet another category of textile waste; they are made from the textile waste gen-
erated during the production of textiles using recycled raw materials.
The textile waste generated at the end of the recycled textile product’s life also
needs to be documented and classified separately as ‘tertiary raw materials’. No data
was able to be found regarding the quantity of tertiary raw materials or its recycling
so this is a topic of research of great importance.
3. Need for textile waste reuse and recycle

3.1. Global textiles consumption and waste generation
Global fibre production was ∼111 million tonnes in the year 2019 (Truscott et al.,
2020) and it is expected to be 146 million tonnes in the year 2030 if business con-
tinues as usual. Polyester is the most-widely used fibre, with a share of ∼52% of the
global fibre production in 2019 (Truscott et al., 2020). In 2017, global fibre production
was ∼105 million metric tonnes, at that time the highest fibre production volume
ever, with a polyester fibre share of ∼50% (Truscott, Tan, & Opperskalski, 2018). Figure
2 shows the global fibre production in the year 2019. In 2019, the market share of
recycled polyester fibres was ∼14%, compared to ∼9% in 2009 (Truscott et al., 2020).
At the same time, the biobased polyester market share was less than 1% (Truscott
et al., 2020). Recycled polyester fibres (rPET) are produced from waste polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) bottles, waste polyester textiles, and cotton/polyester blended
textiles (Senthil Kumar & Janet Joshiba, 2020). Of the total amount of recycled PET
bottles, 44% was used to produce fibres in 2016, and it has been estimated that
around 15 million tonnes of PET bottles were recycled (Sarioğlu & Kaynak, 2018).
Companies such as ZARA, H&M, Nike, Adidas are now coming forward to use recycled
polyester fibres in their products. The bio-based polyesters are manufactured using
biomass (Zia, Noreen, Zuber, Tabasum, & Mujahid, 2016). Cotton is the second-most
Textile Progress 69
Figure 2. World fibre production (%) in the year 2019.
consumed fibre after polyester and its production share increased to 25% in 2019,
compared to 5% in 2013 and global production of regenerated cellulose fibre (RCF)
has more than doubled since 1990. These fibres include viscose rayon, cellulose ace-
tate, lyocell, modal viscose rayon, and cuprammonium rayon. Currently, these fibres
are mainly produced from wood cellulose. According to Textile Exchange estimates,
less than 1% of RCFs are recycled (Truscott et al., 2020). The other plant-based fibres,
such as jute, hemp, flax and coir represent a market share of ∼ 6.5 million tonnes in
2019. The wool from sheep represents a market share of ∼1 million tonnes. By con-
trast, animal hair specialty fibre, such as that from the angora goat, camel, guanaco,
llama, vicuna, and yak, represents ∼0.05 million tonnes. It can be understood that
synthetic fibre consumption and its waste will increase in the future, and many are
not biodegradable, therefore, there is an urgent need to find a sustainable solution
for synthetic polymer textile waste.
The global apparel market was worth US$1.5 trillion in 2020, and it is projected
to grow to approximately US$2.25 trillion in 2025 (Shahbandeh, 2021). The four main
apparel categories are womenswear, menswear, sportswear, and children’s wear. The
demand for womenswear is higher than other apparel categories. The Ellen MacArthur
Foundation (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017) reported that textile utilization is
decreasing over time. Textile utilization means the average number of times a garment
is worn before it is discarded. The textile utilization in the year 2015 was 36% lower
as compared to the year 2000. Also, some garments are thrown away after just seven
to ten wears. The utilization rate is directly proportional to waste generation. Around
60% of Chinese and German citizens keep more clothes than they need and research
by WRAP (WRAP, 2011) reports that about 30% of clothing in an average wardrobe
in the UK is not used for at least a year because it does not fit the body. Much of
these unused textiles become part of the municipal solid waste (Ellen MacArthur
Foundation, 2017).
There is an immediate need for responsible resource consumption and to separate
growth from resource consumption. The circular economy initiatives and demateri-
alization initiatives will reduce the planet’s overall fibre footprint (Truscott et al.,
2018). According to the department of economic and social affairs of the United
Nations, the global population will be 8.501 billion by 2030 and 9.725 billion by
2050 (United Nations, 2015). The number of clothes required and, correspondingly,
textile waste will also increase in the coming years. Further, the global recycled
textile market is expected to reach US$8 billion by 2026 at 5.2 CAGR (Combined
Annual Growth Rate), which was US$5.3 billion in 2018 (AMR, n.d.). The competitive
environment in the market is likely to intensify further over the forecast period due
to increased product/service extensions, technological innovations, and mergers and
acquisitions.
The COVID 19 pandemic has suddenly increased the textile waste burden due to
the increased consumption of single-use personal protective equipment (PPE) such
as face masks, protective suits and shoe covers (Ardusso, Forero-López, Buzzi, Spetter,
& Fernández-Severini, 2021). In March 2020, according to WHO, the projected monthly
demand for face masks and protective suits was 89 and 30 million items, respectively
(Parashar & Hait, 2021). The projected CAGR for personal protective equipment pro-
duction is ∼20% from 2020 to 2025 (World Economic Forum, n.d.). The global monthly
consumption of facemasks is reported to be 129 billion (Kalina & Tilley, 2020) each
representing ∼4 g in weight of disposable face mask. A study reported that
poorly-managed face-mask waste created pollution on beaches and coasts in South
America (Ardusso et al., 2021). Although people around the world have widely started
using washable face masks even this is not a perfect solution because microfibres
released during the facemask washing may ultimately end up in the ocean (Shruti,
Pérez-Guevara, Elizalde-Martínez, & Kutralam-Muniasamy, 2020) together with those
from other sources of course, as outlined in the next section.
3.2. Environmental footprints of textiles

The environmental footprint is a quantification of the natural resources required for
human activity. Whereas the carbon footprint is the measurement of the amount of
greenhouse gas emitted due to human activities. Carbon dioxide is a major compo-
nent of greenhouse gas. The greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent or CO2eq)
from textile manufacturing in 2015 amounted to 1.2 billion tonnes (Ellen MacArthur
Foundation, 2017). Cotton fibre production uses 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land
and 16% of its insecticides. According to the World Health Organization,
highly-hazardous insecticides are used for cotton production. Synthetic fertilizers have
300 times the effect of CO2 in terms of greenhouse gas. Apart from this, a study
reported Indian and US organic cotton’s energy use as 12 MJ/kg of fibre and 14 MJ/
kg of fibre, respectively. However, conventional cotton uses 55 MJ/kg of fibre. The CO2
emission of Indian and US organic cotton are 3.75 kg and 2.35 kg, respectively, and
conventional cotton has 5.89 kg CO2 emissions per tonne of spun fibre. A study
reported by Imran et al (Imran, Özçatalbaş, & Bashir, 2020) stated that the total input
energy required for cotton production was 58,374.07 MJha−1 in the Panjab province
of Pakistan. Their study also reported that it required a 21.78% share of nitrogen
fertilizer, 20.85% of water irrigation, 18.67% of diesel, and 8.32 % of machinery. They
reported a cotton yield of 2395.16 kgha−1, and therefore the energy use came to
24.37 MJ/Kg of cotton production. A life-cycle study reported that conventional and
organic cotton requires the supply of 22,200 and 24,000 kg of water per kg of fibre
produced, respectively. Such a huge amount of water is necessary for cotton fibre
production (Muthu, 2014). Two types of water are used for cotton production: green,
Textile Progress 71
and blue water (Chapagain, Hoekstra, Savenije, & Gautam, 2006), where ‘green water’
is precipitation that does not run off the site so temporarily contributes to soil water
storage, whereas ‘blue water’ consists of surface and groundwater that is stored in
rivers, lakes, behind dams or underground in aquifers.
The quantity of these types water used is different in different countries depend-
ing upon its availability. A study by Chapagain et al. (2006) shows that during 1997
to 2001, a total of 198.4 Gm3/year of water (sum of green and blue water) was used
to produce 54,443,977 tonne per year of seed cotton. A recent study by Jans, von
Bloh, Schaphoff, and Müller (2021) reports that the current average global virtual
water content of cotton is 3300 m3 per tonne. The virtual water content reported
by Chapagain et al. and Jans et al. are similar. However, it is surprising to know
that the values of water consumption per kg of cotton production reported by
Muthu (2014), Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2017), Global Fashion Agenda & The
Boston Consulting Group (Kerr & Landry, 2017) are far different than those reported
by Chapagain et al. (2006) and Jans et al. (2021). The use of modern irrigation
techniques can further reduce the water need. Hemp fibre requires 3.82 GJ/ton of
energy for fertilizer input, farming machinery, fibre processing, and transportation.
Emissions of ammonia, dinitrogen monoxide (nitrous oxide), other nitrogen oxides,
and carbon dioxide of 2.55 kg/ha, 3.06 kg/ha, 0.31 kg/ha, and 1467 kg/ha, respectively,
are also reported. Tables 1 and 2 show energy, water, and greenhouse gas emissions
from some natural and synthetic fibres manufacturing. It should be noted that
polypropylene fibre has not only lower energy and water requirements but also
lower CO2 emissions. The NGO Canopy reported that annually, ∼3.3 million tonnes
of wood pulp come from ancient and endangered forests for the manufacture of
viscose rayon (Survival, 2020). Around 40–50% of RCFs are certified by the Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest
Certification (PEFC).
Table 1. Energy and water requirements and CO2 emissions from some natural fibres (Werf et al.
2008; Barber & Pellow, 2006).
Fibre Energy Water Greenhouse gas emission
Hemp 3.82 GJ/tonne 19.99 kg per kg for hemp yarn 1350 kg CO2-eq per 100 kg of yarn
produced
Flax 261 MJ/kg of yarn produced 72.3 kg per kg for flax yarn 1360 kg CO2-eq per 100 kg of yarn
produced
Wool 1120 MJ for farming – 59.6 kg of CO2 as farm emission
Table 2. Energy and water requirements and CO2 emissions from some natural and synthetic
polymer fibres (Muthu et al. 2012a, 2012b).
CO2 emission – Kg CO2
Energy use in MJ per kg Water requirement per kg emission per kg of fibre
Fibre of fibre of fibre production
Nylon 6 120.47 185 5.5
Nylon 66 138.65 663 6.5
Viscose Rayon 100 640 L 9
Acrylic 175 210 L 5
Polyester 125 62 2.8
Polypropylene 115 43 1.7
Microfibres are a major aspect of marine pollution (Mishra, Charan, & Das, 2019). An
anticipated amount of 1.5 million trillion microfibres are present in the ocean (Mishra
et al., 2019). An estimated quantity of four billion microfibres per square kilometre is
present in Indian ocean seamount sediment (Woodall et al., 2014). According to Miller
et al (Cole, Lindeque, Halsband, & Galloway, 2011), the Hudson River in the USA drains
300 million microfibres every day into the Atlantic ocean. Through the textile industry,
domestic drains, and plastic waste fragmentation, approximately 5 million metric tonnes
of microfibres enter the ocean annually (Mishra et al., 2019). Browne et al. (2011)
reported that a single polyester garment could shed more than 1900 fibres in each
domestic wash and Pirc, Vidmar, Mozer, and Kržan (2016) reported that 0.0012 wt% of
loose fibres are released into effluent water during polyester fleece washing, but a
recent study by De Falco, Di Pace, Cocca, and Avella (2019) stated that 124 to 308 mg
of microfibres per kg of washed fabric were released during garment washing, which
corresponds to a much-higher estimate of 640,000 to 1,500,000 microfibres. The micro-
fibre release during textile washing is dependent on type of fibre, type of yarn, fabric
type, fabric construction parameters and washing conditions such as the water tem-
perature, the mechanical action and the type of detergent used.
The phytoplankton on the surface of the ocean absorb carbon dioxide and are
eaten by zooplankton and a study has reported that microplastic uptake by zooplank-
ton is a common phenomenon (Jemec, Horvat, Kunej, Bele, & Kržan, 2016). The marine
ecosystem absorbs nearly one-third of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmo-
sphere, and phytoplankton play a significant role in sinking carbon dioxide into the
deep sea (Basu & Mackey, 2018). If zooplankton become affected by the microplastics
in freshwater and ocean water, it may affect phytoplankton (Suran, 2018).
The transfer of microfibres across the marine food chain affects aquatic species and
ultimately any birds, animals, and humans which eat them (Henry, Laitala, & Klepp, 2019).
Figure 3 shows the possible pathways of microfibre entry into the food chain. Further,
aquatic animals’ microfibre intake leads to false satiation and gastrointestinal blockages
(Desforges, Galbraith, & Ross, 2015; Wright, Rowe, Thompson, & Galloway, 2013). The
regular-shaped microplastic particles may get easily egested, but the nano-sized plastic
particles accumulate in the aquatic animal’s vital organs and tissues (Waring, Harris, &
Mitchell, 2018). These accumulated nano plastic particles may affect their central nervous
and reproduction systems, impacting the ecosystem’s overall function (Henry et al., 2019).
The presence of 4–18 microfibre particles was reported in shellfish species (Cerithidea
cingulata, Thais mutabilis) in the Persian Gulf (Naji, Nuri, & Vethaak, 2018). Table 3 shows
the hazardous effects of microfibre waste on different aquatic animals.
The chemical impact of microfibres includes the leaching of antioxidants, dyes, and
flame retardants (de Souza Machado, Kloas, Zarfl, Hempel, & Rillig, 2018). The microfibres
have a high surface-to-volume ratio and thus a higher capacity to adsorb a wide range
of pollutants. This raises the risk of enhanced toxic chemical bioavailability (Besseling,
Wegner, Foekema, van den Heuvel-Greve, & Koelmans, 2013; Henry et al., 2019).
Microfibres can leach toxic chemicals into the aquatic animals who ingest them (Mishra
et al., 2019). The microfibres and microplastics become enriched with pathogens while
passing through a wastewater treatment plant and subsequently disperse the microbes
in freshwater systems (Kirstein et al., 2016). A study reported that the likelihood of
disease increases when the coral comes into contact with microplastics in the Asia-Pacific
Textile Progress 73
Figure 3. Possible pathways of microfibre entry into the ocean and its toxicity (Mishra et al.,
2019) (With permission from Elsevier).
Table 3. Hazardous effects of microfibre exposure (Mishra et al., 2019) (With permission from
Elsevier).
Animals affected
Sl. No. by microfibres Exposures Hazardous effects References
1 Fish Microfibres in river and ocean Starvation and reproductive (Van Cauwenberghe
issues & Janssen, 2014)
2 Mussels Microfibres in marine Gut blockage (Duis & Coors, 2016)
environment
3 Copepods Microfibres present in marine Egg size will be reduced (Duis & Coors, 2016)
environment
4 Lugworm Microfibres present in marine Rate of feeding decreased (Duis & Coors, 2016)
environment
5 Marine algae Microfibres present in marine Reduced feeding rate (Duis & Coors, 2016)
environment
6 Crabs Microfibres present in marine Ingest microfibres through gills, (Van Cauwenberghe,
environment causes blockage in their gills Devriese, Galgani,
Robbens, &
Janssen, 2015)
region (Lamb et al., 2018). On land, earthworms are affected by microfibres in the soil
(Mishra et al., 2019). About a quarter of the chemicals produced globally are said to
be used in the textile industry (Ütebay, Çelik, & Çay, 2020), and the chemicals used in
cotton production are sources of surface and groundwater pollution (Muthu, 2014).
3.3. Textile waste and human health

A considerable quantity of microfibres are released into the environment during textile
manufacturing, use, and disposal (Henry et al., 2019). The microfibres enter the envi-
ronment during textile production (primary microplastics) and because of fragmen-
tation of waste textiles caused by activities such as photo-degradation, mechanical
deformation and abrasion (secondary microplastics) (Henry et al., 2019; Kazour et al.,
2019). ‘Fast Fashion’ has led to an increase in synthetic fibre consumption and hence
their production. Visible plastic waste is only ∼6% of the total plastic waste that enters
the ocean (Enomia, 2016). Microplastics are plastic materials or fibres with size <5mm,
and nano plastics have sizes <100nm (GESAMP Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific
Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection, 2015) and it has been estimated that
∼0.19 million tonnes of microfibres from synthetic textile production and domestic
laundering end up in the ocean alone every year (Enomia, 2016). The synthetic fibres
are non-biodegradable owing to their chemical composition and structure
(Szostak-Kotowa, 2004). Microfibres have been found in the sediment samples collected
from the shorelines across the world locations. Carr (2017) reported that microfibres
account for more than 85% of microplastic debris found on shorelines. The proportion
of major synthetic textile fibres found in the ocean were polyester 56%, acrylic 23%,
polypropylene 7%, polyethylene 6%, and polyamide 3% (Browne et al., 2011). The
washing of textiles is the major source of the fibres shedding into wastewater and
the oceans. Out of the total microplastic that enters the ocean, 35% arises from
synthetic the laundering of synthetic polymer textiles (Henry et al., 2019) and landfill
areas nearby the water source are also responsible for microfibre release (Cole
et al., 2011).
Despite its high microfibre filtration efficiency (95–99%), the wastewater treatment
plant is a major source of microplastics due to its high discharge volume (Peng, Wang,
& Cai, 2017; Setälä, Magnusson, Lehtiniemi, & Norén, 2016). 75–90% of secondary
microplastics in the marine originates from land sources and the rest from the ocean
(Duis & Coors, 2016). However, according to Pirc et al. (2016), the specific microplastic
source is not yet well understood. The ingestion of microplastic has been observed
in species ranging from zooplankton to vertebrates (Vandermeersch et al., 2015;
Wright, Rowe, et al., 2013) and various studies have proved the presence of micro-
plastic in edible fish, prawns, and shrimps (Devriese et al., 2015; Van Cauwenberghe
& Janssen, 2014). The microfibres ingested by aquatic animals get absorbed into their
bodies (Ajith, Arumugam, Parthasarathy, Manupoori, & Janakiraman, 2020) and because
seafood is a major component of the human diet. microplastics can enter the human
system (Devriese et al., 2015; Van Cauwenberghe & Janssen, 2014). It comes as no
surprise that microplastics have already entered the food chain (Schwabl et al., 2019),
and whilst multiple studies have shown that, a study by Schwabl et al. (2019) also
showed the presence of microplastic in the human stool. European countries are the
highest seafood consumers, and an intake of 11,000 microfibres per person per year
has been reported with 175 microfibres per person per year from shrimp eating alone
(Mishra et al., 2019). A study by Rochman et al. (2015) reports anthropogenic debris
consists of fibres in fish from California, USA. The microfibre-contaminated seafood
can lead to health problems related to reproduction, hormonal disruption, liver and
Textile Progress 75
kidney damage (Mishra et al., 2019). Phthalates present in the microfibres can affect
the human body in terms of early puberty, reduced male reproductive system devel-
opment, damaged hormone system function, genital defects, and reduced sperm
count level (Meeker, Sathyanarayana, & Swan, 2009). Flame-retardants are widely used
in fabric finishing and some of these have been linked with thyroid disruption, delayed
mental and physical development, memory and learning problems, lower IQ, early
puberty, and reduced fertility. Polystyrene particles can cause cellular damage and
muscle-cell contraction (Ajith et al., 2020). Even the table salt we eat contains micro-
fibres (Yang et al., 2015).
Mason, Welch, and Neratko (2018) reported microplastic in bottled drinking water
in nineteen locations across nine countries. Their study also reveals that 13% of con-
tamination consists of fibres. Synthetic waste textiles degrade very slowly at the
disposal site, producing micro and nanofibres that become airborne and become part
of indoor and outdoor air (Barnes, Galgani, Thompson, & Barlaz, 2009). The indoor
microfibre concentrations are higher than the outdoor ones (Dris et al., 2017). A study
has reported inhaled cellulosic and synthetic fibres in human pulmonary tissues (Pauly,
Mepani, Lesses, Cummings, & Streck, 2002). These inhaled microfibres from the air
deposited in the lung tissue may lead to tumour formation (Mishra et al., 2019).
4. Challenges in textile waste recycling

4.1. Constituents of textile waste
Textile waste could be apparel fabric waste, home textiles waste, medical textile
waste, or any other technical textile waste generated during their manufacture or
at the end of their life. Especially in developing countries, separating textile waste
from municipal solid waste is a great challenge due to a complete lack of or poor
waste management system. As stated before, the majority of textiles consist of
petroleum-based synthetic fibres, which are non-biodegradable, therefore, at the
end of the product’s life, they remain present in polymer form in the environment
for many years if they are dumped in landfill rather than being reused or recycled.
The environmental impacts of synthetic fibres, dyes and chemical finishing agents
within the waste textiles were highlighted in Sections 3.2 and 3.3. During the
COVID-19 pandemic, poorly-managed medical waste created problems to beaches
and increased infection chances to biomedical waste handling personnel (Ardusso
et al., 2021).
4.2. Waste management

Potentially, almost all textiles are recyclable, but only 20% of clothing is collected for
reuse or recycling, whilst the remaining 80% goes to landfill (Kerr & Landry, 2017; Wang,
2010). However, that reported value of 20% is quite old data (reported in the year
2010) and with no more-recent scientific studies on textile waste collection, the same
value has been repeated in reports published by Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Global
Fashion Agenda & The Boston Consulting Group in 2017. The moment waste became
capitalized research interest has grown in processing waste textiles and to develop
innovative applications. Some second-hand textiles are reused, some are recycled and
others may be upcycled or downcycled. However, the proportions are not known despite
its importance for the future management of textile waste and its potential value. This
clearly indicates the lack of interest by funding agencies and within the research com-
munity, alongside the existence of poor textile waste management systems which are
evidence of both policymakers’ and the public’s poor attitude and failure to take respon-
sibility for the complete process of textile waste management.
Furthermore, many countries do not classify and collect textile waste for recycling
separately from municipal solid waste. Textile waste is always either mixed together
with plastic waste or classified as other types of waste. Therefore, textile waste did
not receive special attention for many decades worldwide, and today, the textile is
the second most polluting industry after oil (Milburn, 2016). According to Pensupa
et al (Pensupa et al., 2017), the greatest challenge in textile waste reuse or recycling
is its collection and separation. It must be understood that the waste collector is not
just responsible for taking away the waste but also through all of the steps which
follow through to reuse, recycle, upcycle, and disposal. Textile materials such as
carpets with complex mixtures of contents are difficult to recycle. The potential rev-
enue that can be obtained and the life cycle assessment of the recycling process of
particular textile waste to evaluate the environmental and economic benefits must
be done, and this is also one of the challenges (Pensupa et al., 2017). The different
phases involved in the life cycle of textile waste reuse or recycling are collection,
separation, transportation of the material to second-hand shops, donation centres, or
recycling centres (Zamani, 2014).
4.2.1. Collection
Household textile waste collection poses the biggest challenge, especially in devel-
oping countries, because they do not have any formal system for textile waste col-
lection and no proper system of municipal solid waste sorting and disposal (Kaza
et al., 2018). According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2017), 25% of garments
are collected for reuse or recycling globally. The collection rate of discarded garments
in Germany is 75%, while it varies between 10% and 15% in the US and China. The
UK has municipal textile waste collection schemes, but these vary by local district.
Many countries in Asia and Africa do not have a system in place for discarded textile
collection. Therefore, by understanding this challenge in the majority part of the
world and its impact on the environment, policymakers have to make laws to design
an environmentally sustainable system to collect textile waste (Lehner, Mont, Mariani,
& Mundaca, 2020). Encouraging the consumer to participate in textile waste manage-
ment is very important. Some companies like Patagonia, Zara and H&M have intro-
duced take-back schemes for their customers. The take-back schemes are helping in
the collection, sorting and reuse or recycle of waste textiles. H&M’s ‘Your Clothes’
initiative, launched in 2013, has so far collected 45,000 tonnes of clothes (Ellen
MacArthur Foundation, 2017). However, the reach of these companies is limited.
Furthermore, multiple charity organizations are working on collecting end-of-life
textiles for different purposes. Textile waste generated in industry can be collected
with more ease than household textile waste. Microfibre waste collection from the
oceans is challenging and requires enormous machinery and costs (Mishra et al., 2019).
Textile Progress 77
According to the World Bank report (Hoornweg & Bhada-Tata, 2012), textile waste
is a part of ‘other waste’, which includes leather, rubber, multi-laminates, e-waste,
appliances, and other inert materials. The other waste accounted for about 15.5 %
in 2012 globally, which is estimated to increase to 16.25% by 2025. The average
global municipal solid waste collection rate is around 70%. Further, it has been
reported that recycling e-textiles waste is more challenging as compared to ordinary
textile waste (Köhler, Hilty, & Bakker, 2011). The e-textiles consist of electronic com-
ponents or devices embedded into the textile. The fundamental challenge is the
collection of e-textiles. In the case of the export of e-textiles, flammable components
such as batteries must be removed from textiles before baling operation. Furthermore,
if the e-textiles are processed on mechanical fibre reclamation machines, all the
electronic devices or components need to be separated carefully from textiles.
Otherwise, the quality and market value of the shredded material obtained will go
down. Additionally, the dust released during the shredding of e-textile waste con-
taining heavy metals will cause serious environmental and health hazards.
4.2.2. Separation
The majority of textiles today are multicomponent, which means they consist of
different textile fibres. The separation of multicomponent textiles is a great challenge.
Waste textiles are sorted according to their end-use (Islam & Bhat, 2019). Further,
different trims are attached with textiles or clothing, and separating trims is a
tedious job. The textiles meant for mechanical or chemical recycling for a particular
application need to be sorted according to colour, fibre type and blend constituents.
The challenges associated with sorting are the efficiency of separation, the quality
of the separated materials and the recycled material’s quality. Due to such difficulties
associated with recycling blended textiles, reducing the carbon footprint after recy-
cling the blended textiles is lower. Here, the role of textile designer and recycling
technology is very important. The textile blend needs to be decided cautiously by
considering the recyclability and end-of-life scenarios of the textile product. The
fibres such as hemp, which have very low environmental footprints in terms of
energy and water consumption, and CO2 emission compared to cotton requires
attention as a potential substitute by researchers, policymakers and inverters. Various
studies have reported environmentally friendly methods to break the blended tex-
tiles into their basic polymers for reuse.
Chemical processes have been developed to separate the fibre components from
waste blended fabrics (WBFs). Polyester and cotton fibre blend is widely preferred in
apparel and thus many studies have focused on separating these fibres using chemical
means. One such study reported technology to separate polyester and cotton from
waste jeans (Yousef et al., 2020). In the first stage dyes are removed from the jeans.
The second stage consists of polyester dissolution and separation from cotton by using
a green switchable hydrophilicity solvent. The recycling rate achieved by this technology
is more than 96%. The technology’s reported economic return is US$1629 per tonne
of waste with carbon footprint reduction by 1440 kg of CO2eq. Another such study,
reported a technology to separate cotton from cotton/polyester blended textile waste.
The cotton separation occurs in three stages: dye removal from the textiles, dissolution
Table 4. Published methods of the separation of WBFs (Ling et al., 2019).

Substrate Methods Results
Taffeta mixture 34/66a 50 °C, 9 h; 200 mg/g cellusoft L; 80% insoluble microfibrillar material
mechanical agitation
Orange 50/50 WBFsa 120 °C, 2 h, 85% 95% cellulose
N–methylmorpholine–N–oxide
WBFs 95 °C, 10 N H2SO4, 60S; room temperature, Effective separation
0.25–4 h mechanical beating
Used jeans 50 °C, 7 h; 85% phosphoric acid 100% polyester; 79.2% sugar
65/35 WBFsa 100 °C, 12 h [Hmim]HSO4, acetylation 49.3% cellulose acetate;
96.2% polyester
50/50 WBFsa 50% NMMO, 120 °C, 3 h, 1:19 Effective separation
Carboxymethylation
Blended yarns 120 °C, 6 h, AMIMCI Effective separation
White 40/60 WBFsa −20 °C, 1 h, 12% NaOH; 45 °C, 72 h, Effective separation
Novozym 188 and Celluclast 1.5 L
Non–dyed 50/50 yarnsa Separation 20 °C heat–treatment 180 °C 95.47% the degradation rate of cotton
20 g/L MgCl2, 4 g/L Al2(SO4)3
New blended bed sheets 90 °C, 40 min, 10% NaOH TPA, EG, and cellulose
WBFs 50 °C, 0.5 h, H2SO4 Effective separation
20–40Hz
40/60 waste blue jeansa 150 °C, 120 min, 0.5 M Na2CO3 80.83% cellulose
10.5% polyester
35/65 WBFsa 150 °C, 3 h, 1.5 wt% HCl Hydrothermal 48.21% cellulose 96.24% polyester
Method 15.57% glucose
(Note: aa/b indicates that the blended fabric contains a% polyester and b% cotton.).
of polyester and other organic impurities using dimethyl sulfoxide treatment in a

specially-designed reactor, and purification of the obtained cotton fibres (Zamani, 2014).
This technology has a 93% recycling rate and profitability of US$ 1466 per tonne of
waste and carbon footprint reduction by 1534 kg of CO2-eq per tonne of waste. Laura
Navone et al. (2020) reported selective dissolution of wool fibres from wool/polyester
blended textiles by an enzymatic approach. They reported the digestion of wool fibre
using a keratinase enzyme. The enzyme has no significant impact on the properties of
recovered polyester fibres compared to virgin polyester fibres. The recovered polyester
could be recycled into polyester yarn and reused into garments and other textiles.
Some chemical methods of separation of waste blended fabrics are shown in Table 4.
Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been used in textile waste separation (Liu, Li,
& Wei, 2019). The textile waste generally gets mixed at various stages of the collection
process and sorting plays a crucial role. Manual sorting is time and effort-consuming
and not a reliable technique. NIR spectroscopy is a fast, non-destructive, efficient,
and accurate technology which can be used to assist sorting because different fibres
show different absorption peaks and the size and steepness of absorption peaks vary
with composition and content.
4.2.3. Storage and disposal

Approximately one-third of global solid waste is openly dumped, and around a quarter
of the total is landfilled in unspecified locations; only 13% is recycled (Kaza et al.,
2018). This is evidence of poor waste management in the majority of the world.
Therefore, one can safely understand that any textile waste within the municipal solid
waste goes directly to landfill along with other wastes. According to the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation (2017), 73% of global clothing waste goes to either landfilling
or incineration. However, with the increasing quantity of waste, the landfill space
Textile Progress 79
requirement will also increase, and landfilling is not at all an environment-friendly

solution in textile waste management. Incineration is one of the other techniques
practised in waste management. According to the World Bank report (Kaza et al.,
2018), 11% of the global municipal solid waste is incinerated. However, incineration
results in the emission of dioxins, which accumulate in the environment and enter
the food chain. Dioxins adversely affect the human immune system and also cause
cancer (Pensupa et al., 2017). Therefore, reduction in the amounts and improvement
in the process of incineration is also one of the great challenges in textile waste
management because of its adverse effects on the environment and human life.
4.2.4. Supply chain for efficient textile waste management

A huge amount of textile waste ends up in landfill. There can be two reasons for
this: lack of awareness and poor supply-chain control of textile waste. The govern-
ments of each country should be aware of textile waste. Many textile-waste-recycling
charity organizations can push the governments to make strong policies to look at
textile waste seriously for its reuse or recycling, and further to this, governments
should promote textile-waste recycling business development by providing the busi-
nesses involved with the necessary economic support and supply chains for domestic
and international marketing. Different countries have different types of restrictions
on the import and export of textile wastes or used clothing. According to the World
Trade Organization (Lu, 2018), the average applied tariff rate in 2016 was higher for
used clothing than new clothing. International collaborations and agreed special
textile waste recycling policies will be necessary to bring about any big reforms in
textile waste recycling.
5. Various ways of reuse and recycling textile waste

Recycling technologies are classified as primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary recycling
methods. In primary recycling, the waste material from a product is recycled and used to
produce similar products. Therefore, this method is also called closed-loop recycling.
5.1. Primary recycling

Primary recycling is mainly intended for synthetic-polymer fibres such as polyester
or nylon and the waste consisting of these polymers is re-melted and re-spun
into yarns.
5.2. Secondary recycling

Secondary recycling involves converting waste textiles into a new product (a product
different from the source of the waste material). Secondary recycling may also use
mechanical and chemical methods to disintegrate the waste textile to recover fibres,
and produce new products. One such example is extracting fibres from waste textiles
by mechanical shredding and processing these fibres to produce yarns. These yarns
could produce fabrics for various applications ranging from doormats to school uni-
form fabrics depending on the quality of waste and extracted fibres (Ütebay, Çelik,
& Çay, 2019).
5.3. Tertiary recycling

In tertiary recycling, the waste product is converted into simpler chemical compounds
for example by pyrolysis, gasification or hydrolysis processes where chemical methods
such as these are intended to extract the intact monomer units from the polymer chains.
Various such methods have been reported in the literature (Ling, Shi, Hou, & Yan, 2019),
and these extracted monomers are re-processed to produce new materials. The Econyl®
process is good example of closed-loop recycling wherein the monomers are extracted
from used nylon polymer, repolymerised and remelted to produce new nylon fibres
(Sewport, n.d.). Worn-Again Technologies (Nottingham, England) have developed a
closed-loop recycling system wherein they chemically extract the monomers from cellulose
and polyester in fabrics where they were blended together, and process them separately
to produce polyester and regenerated cellulose filament yarns. The resultant yarns are
used in fabric production for various different applications (Forever, n.d.).
5.4. Quaternary recycling

Quaternary recycling involves incinerating solid wastes to utilize the generated heat
(Muthu, Li, Hu, & Ze, 2012c).
Textile recycling routes are also often classified as mechanical, chemical, and ther-
mal recycling. However, according to Sandin and Peters (Sandin & Peters, 2018), this
classification is ambiguous and questionable. In many cases, the recycling routes
consist of a mix of mechanical, chemical, and thermal processes. In the case of chem-
ical recycling for example, textiles are mechanically shredded to small size and then
processed. Thus, classification of such recycling routes is difficult and, therefore,
systematization of recycling routes is required. The new classification of recycling
routes based on the level of disassembly of the recovered material is shown in Table
5. However, the systematization of recycling routes does not consider garment reuse,
including reusing discarded or donated garments. The authors suggest that garment
reuse also needs to be considered. The reuse or recycling strategy for a particular
waste textile could be decided based on the principles described in Figure 4.
The other recycling routes are upcycling and downcycling. When the product
developed from recycled material has a higher value or quality than the original
product, it is termed upcycling and vice versa for downcycling. Another classification
of textile recycling routes is closed- or open-loop recycling. When material from a
product is recycled and used to produce similar products, it is termed closed-loop
recycling whereas when the material from a product is recycled and used to produce
another product, it is termed open-loop recycling.
Fontell and Heikkilä (2017) reported that discarded textiles can be divided into
four categories, namely, good as new (homogeneous and inhomogeneous), worn
Table 5. The systematization of recycling routes (Sandin & Peters, 2018).

Description Recycling type
The fabric of a product is recovered and reused in new product Fabric recycling
The fibres are extracted from fabric or yarn for reuse Fibre recycling
The polymer or oligomer is recovered from fibres for reuse Polymer or Oligomer recycling
The monomer is recovered from polymer or oligomer for reuse Monomer recycling
Textile Progress 81
Figure 4. Reuse or recycling routes for end-of-life textiles.
(homogeneous and inhomogeneous). The good as new and homogeneous textiles

are unsold clothes from the stores, cutting waste and surplus from the garment
making. The good-as-new and inhomogeneous textiles are mixed materials from the
industry. The worn and homogeneous textiles are materials from laundry, rentals, and
work clothing. The worn and inhomogeneous textiles are post-consumer wastes.
Whether reuse or recycling should be preferred for any end-of-life textiles could be
easily decided based on the category into which it falls (Figure 4).
5.5. Garment reusing

Garment reusing is particular to the reusing of discarded or donated garments.
Charity organizations especially are involved in garment recycling. The global trade
in second-hand clothing (SHC) is worth more than US$1 billion each year (Baden
& Barber, 2015). Around 80% of people in Africa wear imported second-hand clothes
(Editorial, 2018). Major exporters and importers of used clothes are shown in Figure
5. The value chain of global second-hand clothing is shown in Figure 6. Charitable
organizations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Waste & Resources Action
Programme (WRAP), FABSCRAP and GOONJ for example, collect end-of-life textiles
through their own infrastructure for different purposes such as donation, reuse and
recycling or sometimes to sell to earn money for charity work (Bairagi, 2018; Watson
& Palm, 2016). The organization GOONJ based in India for example, collects donated
textiles. The usable donated textiles are sorted and cleaned then used for one of
two purposes, either being given to people as a reward for involving them in
developmental activities or as a relief measure during natural calamities or disasters
(Nanath, 2011).
Fontell and Heikkilä (2017) reported that the good-as-new and homogeneous or
inhomogeneous discarded textiles such as unsold clothes from retail could be reused;
small designer boutiques, online material banks and recycling centres can be used to
promote the reuse of such textiles. Russell, Morley, Tipper, Drivas, and Ward (2010)
reported methods to reuse corporate clothing that carries a company’s distinctive logo
or insignia. Therefore, there are risks to security and the company’s identity in reusing
such textiles. They stated three methods to remove the logo or insignia from the textile,
namely polymer dissolution, thermal decomposition and melting, and thermal expansion.
In the first method, stitching or embroidery thread is made of polymer that dissolves
Figure 5. Major importers and exporters of used clothing in 2017 (Lu, 2018).
Figure 6. The value chain for the global second-hand clothing trade (Sing & Esquivias, 2019).
Textile Progress 83
at elevated temperature. A similar approach based on polymer dissolution can be used

to remove a screen-printed logo from the textiles. In the second method, the adhesive
or sewing thread’s mechanical failure is achieved at elevated temperatures to remove
the logo. In the third method, the adhesive that contains thermally-reactive filler expands
upon heating, thereby removing the logo. Certain challenges are faced by the
second-hand clothing industry. The checking and sorting of the collected textiles require
skilled labourers. The second-hand clothing industry can play a role in the decline in
domestic textile and clothing production (Zamani, 2014). Especially in sub-Saharan
Africa, over one-third of the people use second-hand clothing because it is more
affordable. However, second-hand clothing’s total global trade is less than 0.5 percent
of the total textile trade (Baden & Barber, 2015). Of the world’s used clothing exports,
the USA alone has almost 40% market share (Norum, 2017).
5.6. Fabric recycling

When a product’s fabric is recovered and reused in a new product, it is termed fabric
recycling (Sandin & Peters, 2018). Geetha and Pammi (Dissanayake & Sinha, 2013)
reported a re-fashioning process in which second-hand clothing is reworked into new
garments. The re-fashioning process consists of collecting the post-consumer clothing
waste from charity shops, public donations, or second-hand clothing wholesalers,
sorting the collected textiles according to design, colour, or fabric type, then partially
or fully disassembling according to final garment design. Disassembling is a manual
and time-consuming operation. The disassembled parts are then sent for re-designing.
Finally, the new textile product is taken to the market. In India, a non-governmental
organization GOONJ works in the area of textile recycling. The value chain of the
charitable organization GOONJ is shown in Figure 7. GOONJ recycles unusable textiles
Figure 7. The GOONJ value chain (Nanath, 2011).

such as bedsheets, blouses, petticoats, jeans and trousers, saris, chunaris and T-shirts
to produce school bags, sanitary napkins, school yoga mats, strings for ladies suits,
women’s undergarments, handbags and mattresses for babies (Nanath, 2011). The
shoe brand Insecta produces shoes from used clothing and leftover fabrics. Similarly,
the Ecosimple brand develops various products from end-of-life or discarded textiles
(Broega, Jordão, & Martins, 2017).
5.7. Fibre recycling

When the fibres are extracted from fabric or yarn or polymeric composites for reuse,
it is termed fibre recycling. Fibre recycling is a relatively easy way to recycle waste
textiles. Fibre recycling involves cutting the waste textile fabrics into small pieces,
shredding them using a rag tearing or garnetting machine. The garnetting machine
may have one roller or a series of rollers covered with fine pins or wires which cut
and open the fabric pieces into fibre form. The fibres extracted from the waste textiles
by using the garnetting process are called ‘shoddy’ and the shoddy production process
is shown in Figure 8. Panipat in India is Asia’s biggest textile recycling hub. In Panipat
alone, the bathroom mats manufactured from recycled cotton have created a US$282
million industry, and recycled acrylic and woollen threads manufacturing is a US$
98–141 million industry (Handique, 2010).
The staple-fibre yarn spinning process generates fibre waste. Halimi, Ben, and Sakli
(2008) reported qualitative and quantitative analysis of waste consisting of machine
droppings in preparatory processes such as the blow-room and carding in yarn spin-
ning. Their study showed that the rotor-spun yarn developed from 100% waste fibres
showed 26.3% lower tenacity than that without waste yarn and that yarn irregularity
increased with an increase in waste content. Yarn elongation to break also decreased
with an increase in waste content. Their study concluded that the addition of up to
25% waste of that type does not alter tenacity, yarn irregularity, or yarn elongation
but it did not report on fibre waste generated at various other stages of the yarn
spinning process. Ütebay et al. (2019) in their study reported that greige fabric shred-
ding results in a lower short fibre ratio as compared to dyed fabric.
Many authors have suggested chemical processes to disintegrate the blended waste
textiles to recover the fibres separately so that they can be recycled. Ling et al. (2019)
used the strongest heteropoly acid, phosphotungstic acid (H3PW12O40) for cellulose
hydrolysis. Phosphotungstic acid is a recyclable heteropoly acid that can release plenty
of hydrogen ions in an aqueous solution. Further, the freely available ions interact
Figure 8. Stages of the shoddy production process (Kamble & Behera, 2020).
Textile Progress 85
with the oxygen atoms present in the ether linkages of cellulose and which can cause
the hydrolytic cleavage of β-1,4-glycosidic links in amorphous regions of the fibre.
The maximum yield of polyester and microcrystalline cellulose components was
obtained at 140°C temperature with 6 hour reaction time at 3.47 mmol/L of phospho-
tungstic acid and 1:20 solid/liquid ratio. The polyester fibres recovered in this process
can be used for yarn spinning or any other applications. Khurshid, Hengstermann,
Hasan, Abdkader, and Cherif (2020) reported processing techniques to recycle waste
carbon fibre for thermoset composite production. The global demand for carbon fibre
is increasing in various sectors, namely aerospace, defence, automotive, sports equip-
ment, wind energy, and construction industry. The projected global market for carbon
fibres in 2022 is 117,000 tonnes (Zhang, Chevali, Wang, & Wang, 2020). The projected
carbon fibre demand in the year 2030 will be around 160,000 tonnes, and the pro-
jected carbon fibre waste will be around 55,000 tonnes. Further, the carbon fibre
production process is energy-intensive and expensive. Also, this process has a negative
impact on both environment and human health (Pakdel, Kashi, Varley, & Wang, 2021).
Therefore, there is a need to identify the various recycling routes for carbon fibre
waste. Figure 9 shows different carbon fibre waste management routes.
Carbon fibre waste could be classified into three groups (Khurshid et al., 2020).
The carbon fibre waste can be in the dry form, i.e. waste generated during yarn and
fabric manufacturing (Type I), it can be wet waste in the form of out of date prepreg
rolls (Type II), and it can be in the form of worn out composite components (Type III)
such as wind turbine blades. The Type I waste can be easily recycled into composites
by chopping into small lengths or milling. However, Type II and Type III must be pro-
cessed by pyrolysis and solvolysis techniques for fibre reclamation. The waste carbon
fibres can be processed using injection moulding, nonwoven, tape development, and
hybrid spinning technology. The mechanical properties of thermoplastic composites
reinforced with Type I waste are identical to virgin carbon fibre composites. However,
the mechanical properties of Type III waste reinforced composites are poorer than
Figure 9. CFRC waste and dry CF scrap management routes (Pakdel et al., 2021).
those of virgin carbon fibre composites. Waste carbon fibres can be easily converted
into wet-laid and dry-laid nonwovens. Wet-laid nonwovens use papermaking tech-
niques and they produce isotropic structures. Szpieg, Wysocki, and Asp (2009) reported
that the nonwoven fabric produced from carbon fibre waste and recycled polypro-
pylene sheets could be stacked and hot-pressed to produce a composite material.
The dry-laid nonwovens of carbon fibres were produced by using the carding machine.
The waste carbon fibres and matrix fibres were processed on the carding machine
to produce a fibre web that was further hot pressed. Such composites developed
from carbon fibre waste are widely used in the automotive industry to develop com-
ponents such as engine oil pans, dashboard parts, engine covers, headlight supports,
car door panels, car interiors, car seat backs, brackets and suspension spring turrets.
5.8. Polymer or oligomer recycling

When the polymer or oligomer is recovered from fibres for reuse, it is termed polymer
or oligomer recycling and there are various ways to recover polymer or oligomer
from waste textiles. Waste cotton textiles for example can be used to produce regen-
erated cellulose fibres and one well-known method is to dissolve cotton-based waste
textiles using N-methylmorpholine N-oxide (NMMO) solution to produce cellulose
pulp (Haule, Carr, & Rigout, 2016). This pulp can be processed in similar manner to
that of viscose rayon yarn production process to produce yarn. Another method is
selective dissolution in case of polyester/cotton blended textiles using the ionic liquid
(1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non-5-enium acetate) (Haslinger, Hummel, Anghelescu-Hakala,
Määttänen, & Sixta, 2019). The cellulose is dissolved using ionic liquid and processed
to produce multifilament yarn. However, this method has not been a commercial
success. An enzymatic hydrolysis is another approach to recover valuable monomer
from waste textiles (Li, Hu, Du, & Lin, 2019). Enzymes such as cellulase and β- glu-
cosidase have been reported to enable the recovery of glucose from waste textiles.
5.9. Monomer recycling

When the monomer is recovered from polymer or oligomer for reuse, it is called
monomer recycling. The Patagonia process is one example of monomer recycling
whereby 100% polyester discarded textiles are first manually separated then cut into
small granules. The polyester is then chemically broken down into molecules of
dimethyl terephthalate but detail about the method used to recover dimethyl tere-
phthalate using the Patagonia process is not available in the literature. The dimethyl
terephthalate is used as an intermediate product in polyester fibre production
(Patagonia, n.d.). Ling et al. (2019) developed a new approach to separate polyester
from waste polyester/cotton blended textiles using phosphotungstic acid to hydrolyse
the cellulose and treated the separated polyester to produce terephthalic acid.
5.10. Recycling of technical textiles

The semi-finished or finished textiles and textile products developed to confer par-
ticular performance characteristics are called technical textiles (Shishoo, 1997). Technical
Textile Progress 87
textiles are divided into twelve broad sectors based on their applications, namely,
MobilTech, InduTech, SportTech, BuildTech, HomeTech, ClothTech, MediTech, AgroTech,
ProTech, PackTech, OekoTech, and GeoTech (Industry Growth & Forecast 2027, n.d.).
The technical textiles market is projected to grow from US$175.73 billion in 2019 to
US$251.82 billion in 2027 (Precedence Research, n.d.). MobilTech (textiles used for
automotive) has the highest market share compared to all other sectors due to the
increasing demand for cars (Industry Growth & Forecast 2027, n.d.). However, the use
of medical textiles as personal protective equipment (PPE) has tremendously increased
due to COVID 19 pandemic in the last two years. The sustainable management of
medical textiles waste is a great challenge in front of the world. The improper han-
dling and disposal of medical wastes cause the transfer of viral pathogens to the
recycling workers (Singh, Tang, & Ogunseitan, 2020). The polymer recovery from
medical textile waste is challenging because of the need to eliminate any risk of
infection to the recycling workers, however, continuing to employ single-use personal
protective equipment (PPE) is not a sustainable practice. Studies have shown that
techniques such as infusion of hydrogen peroxide vapour, ultraviolet or
gamma-irradiation, ethylene oxide gasification, application of spray-on disinfectants,
and infusion of base materials with antimicrobial nanoparticles are helpful to disinfect
PPE kit for reuse (Price et al., 2020), but they are usually unsuitable for prolonging
the life of the single-use filter facepiece respirators widely used in hospitals because
many such treatments significantly reduce their effectiveness; even so a range of
successful treatments have recently been identified (Morris & Murray, 2020).
STERED® (PR Krajné, Krajné, Slovakia) is the trademark of patented new construc-
tional insulating materials developed using synthetic textile waste materials extracted
from end-of-life automotive technical textiles (Danihelová et al., 2019). The complexity
of the structure (many components attached together) is a fundamental problem
associated with recycling technical textiles. Delta M is one of the air filter manufac-
turers that take back filters to recycle (DeltaM Inc, n.d.). Such take-back schemes will
help to encourage the user to take part in the recycling of technical textiles. Generally,
however, studies about the recycling of technical textiles are limited, and research is
needed to find new ways to recycle technical textiles.
5.11. Composite recycling

The use of polymeric composites in disparate fields such as aerospace, automotive,
construction, and energy generation is increasing due to their high strength to weight
ratio (Pakdel et al., 2021). The USA and UK are generating around 3 kilotonnes of
carbon fibre waste per year within their composite industry. In 2030, around 6000–8000
commercial planes will be decommissioned in Europe alone (Pakdel et al., 2021).
Different composite recycling techniques are depicted in Figure 10. Mechanical recy-
cling is a mature recycling technique (Meng et al., 2018). The re-cyclate obtained
after composite milling consists of short fibres along with matrix which could be
used as filler in short fibre composites (Zhang et al., 2020). Pyrolysis is a commercially
used carbon fibre recovery process from waste composites, in which the composite
is subjected to high temperature under an inert gas atmosphere (Zhang et al., 2020).
In the fluidized bed technique, the re-cyclate obtained after shredding (typically
Figure 10. A classification of the major CFRP recycling methods (Zhang et al., 2020) (With per-
mission from Elsevier).
6–20mm in size) is fed to a silica sand bed. The silica bed is fluidized by air heated
to 450 and 550 °C and 10–25 kPa pressure (Meng, McKechnie, Turner, & Pickering,
2017). The temperature is chosen to ensure complete matrix degradation. This tech-
nique has health hazards due to pollutant gas, organic solvents, usage of high energy
(Zhang et al., 2020). The solvolysis technique uses a solvent to dissolve away the
thermoset matrix to separate it from fibres (Meng et al., 2018). A wide variety of
solvents, such as water, ethanol, acetone or methanol can be used for solvolysis.
6. Upcycling textile waste

Multiple studies have reported on various products that have been upcycled and
researchers are still trying to develop more products, so some remain at the research
stage whilst others have already become a commercial success.
6.1. Ethanol production

The hydrolysis of cellulose into fermentable sugars, such as glucose, is necessary for
bioethanol production (Sasaki, Kiyokawa, Asada, & Nakamura, 2019). However, it is
difficult to hydrolyse the cellulose molecules due to the tight intramolecular and inter-
molecular hydrogen linkages between hydroxyl groups (Sun & Cheng, 2002), and
pre-treatments are necessary to reduce the cellulose crystallinity (Sasaki et al., 2019).
Gholamzad, Karimi, and Masoomi (2014) reported an alkaline pre-treatment method to
convert polyester/cotton blended textile waste into ethanol with polyester recovery.
The lignin and hemicellulose in the cotton can affect the bioconversion of textiles. In
the first step, they pretreated the waste textiles with alkaline mixtures of NaOH (12 wt%),
NaOH/urea (7/12 wt%), NaOH/thiourea (9.5/4.5 wt%), and NaOH/urea/thiourea (8/8/6.5).
They mixed 5 g of textile waste with 95 g of the alkaline solution at four different tem-
peratures, namely −20, 0, 23, and 100 °C for one hour. In the second step, pretreated
Textile Progress 89
and untreated textile waste was subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis to dissolve the
cellulose. The pre-treatment process transformed cellulose I to cellulose II and that
helped to ease the breakdown of cellulose during hydrolysis. The ethanol was able to
be produced with simultaneous scarification and fermentation of the treated and
untreated textile waste. Their study concluded that the ethanol yield improved after
pre-treatment, and the highest yield was observed with pre-treatment of NaOH/urea
at −20 °C whereas a yield of only 36% for untreated textile waste was observed. Nikolić,
Lazić, Veljović, and Mojović (2017) produced bio-ethanol from pre-treated cotton fabrics
and waste cotton materials by enzymatic hydrolysis of the cotton fabrics followed by
fermentation. Sasaki et al. (2019) reported the ethanol production by using glucose
obtained by hydrolysis of waste cotton towel and residue from microwave-treated
waste-cotton towelling at 200 °C for 7 minutes with 0.25 (w/w)% sulphuric acid catalyst.
Jeihanipour and Taherzadeh (2009) also developed ethanol from cotton lint and waste
blue jeans. They reported that cotton lint pretreated with 12% NaOH at 0°C for 3 hours
when enzymatically hydrolysed for four days could result in 99.1% ethanol yield.
6.2. Glucose production

Plants and most algae produce glucose during photosynthesis from water and carbon
dioxide, using energy from sunlight to drive the reaction. Natural cellulose fibres,
especially cotton, contain a high proportion of cellulose (∼80%) (Ramamoorthy,
Skrifvars, & Persson, 2015). Li et al. (2019) reported that glucose and polyester could
be recovered from cotton/polyester blended waste textiles using an enzymatic hydro-
lysis process. They pretreated the textile waste with 7 w/v% sodium hydroxide and
12 w/v% urea at −20 °C for six hours. The textile-waste loading during pre-treatment
was kept at 5% w/v. Enzymatic hydrolysis of pre-treated, milled, and crude textile
waste was carried out by exposing it to different concentrations of cellulase and
β-glucosidase. The effect of exposure time, pH, temperature, and substrate loading
was also studied. Their study concluded that the maximum glucose recovery of 98.3%
was obtained with waste textiles pre-treated with freezing NaOH/urea and treated
with 20 FPU/g of cellulase dosage and 10 U/g of β-glucosidase dosage at 3% (w/v)
substrate loading at 50 C and a pH of 5. Sanchis-Sebastiá, Ruuth, Stigsson, Galbe, and
Wallberg (2021) reported a two-step process for glucose production from waste textiles
with a higher yield. In the first step, the waste cotton textile was dissolved in 80%
concentrated sulphuric acid at 30 °C for one hour in a water bath. This mixture was
diluted with 5% sulphuric acid and treated at 121 °C for one hour in an autoclave in
the second step. A glucose yield of over 90% was reported.
6.3. Nanocellulose production

Nanocelluloses consist of two major classes, nanostructured materials (cellulose micro-
crystals and cellulose microfibrils) and nanofibres (cellulose nanofibrils, cellulose nano-
crystals, and bacterial cellulose) (Trache et al., 2020). Cellulose-containing textile waste
can be used to extract nanocellulose. In their study, Prado, Gonzales, and Spinacé
(2019) reported the one-step process for nanocellulose extraction from viscose rayon
yarn waste. The viscose rayon yarn waste was hydrolysed using sulphuric acid (64 wt%)
at 40°C and a acid hydrolysis reaction time of 5 minutes. Nanocellulose can be used
in various applications such as nanocomposites, heavy-metal ion removal from waste-
water, as a thickener for cosmetics or a texturing agent in food, as a filler for special
textiles, in biodegradable packaging, as a CO2 absorbant, and in oil recovery (Phanthong
et al., 2018). Wang, Yao, Zhou, and Zhang (2017) prepared cellulose nanocrystals (CNC)
from waste cotton clothes. The CNCs were prepared in two steps. In the first step,
cellulose was obtained from waste clothing. The cotton cloth is pulped in this step,
and this pulp is treated with 10% sodium hydroxide at 70 °C for 2 hours. Further, the
decolouration of the pulp is achieved by the treatment of 1.5% hydrogen peroxide.
In step two, acid hydrolysis of celluloses was done in a mixture of sulphuric acid,
hydrochloric acid, and deionized water with a volume ratio of 3:1:11 at 55 °C for
7 hours by using ultrasonic waves. The length and diameter of CNC extracted from
discarded cotton clothes range from 28 to 470 nm and 3 to 35 nm. The study con-
cluded that the thermal stability of CNCs prepared by using waste cotton cloths was
higher than CNCs prepared by using degreased cotton. Further, the CNCs developed
in their research can be used for biocomposite preparation.
Further, Ling et al. (2019) developed a new approach to separate polyester and
microcrystalline cellulose components from polyester/cotton waste blended fabrics
(WBFs). The conventional methods of separating the same are solvent, acid hydrolysis,
and enzymatic hydrolysis. However, these methods cause equipment corrosion and
secondary pollution caused by a catalyst such as sulphuric acid, the cost of solvent
and enzyme may not be acceptable. Further, the authors used phosphotungstic acid
(H3PW12O40) for the hydrolysis of cellulose. Phosphotungstic acid is a recyclable solid
heteropoly acid that can release many hydrogen ions (H+) in an aqueous solution.
These protons are freely available to interact with the oxygen atoms in the ether
linkages of cellulose, which can cause the hydrolytic cleavage of β-1,4-glucopyranose
bonds. The highly-negatively-charged phosphotungstic acid aqueous solution is con-
sidered as a better solvent for cellulose on account of its strong hydrogen-bond
accepting ability created by the external metal-oxygen clusters of the [PW12O40]3−
anion. They have studied the effect of temperature, reaction time, phosphotungstic
acid concentration, solid/liquid ratio on the yield of polyester and microcrystalline
cellulose components. They found the maximum yield of polyester and microcrystalline
cellulose components at 140°C temperature with 6 hour reaction time at 3.47 mmol/L
of phosphotungstic acid and a 1:20 solid/liquid ratio.
6.4. Biogas production

Biogas is a mixture of gasses produced by anaerobic fermentation of organic com-
pounds by methane-producing bacteria (Trache et al., 2020). Ismail and Talib (2016)
reported biogas recovery from medical cotton waste. (The medical cotton industry
generates waste in cotton pall residues, roll and pad gauze, crepe bandage, and
cotton thread residues.) They firstly cleaned the waste and crushed it into powder
form. The inoculum slurry was prepared by using cattle manure and water. The biogas
production was monitored for 90 days. They concluded that medical cotton industry
waste is a good option for anaerobic co-digestion and manure waste for biogas
production. Hasanzadeh, Mirmohamadsadeghi, and Karimi (2018) reported methane
Textile Progress 91
production using cotton/polyester jeans. They reported a methane yield of 328.9 and
361.1 mL/g volatile solid from pure cotton and waste blue jeans pretreated with 0.5 M
sodium carbonate at 150 °C for 120 min. Juanga-Labayen, Yanac, and Yuan (2021)
reported anaerobic digestion of waste cotton towels for methane production. They
exhibited a methane yield of 366.76 mL/g volatile solid from untreated cotton towel
waste. Studies about biogas production using waste textiles were also reported by
Sołowski, Konkol, Shalaby, and Cenian (2020) and Jeihanipour, Aslanzadeh, Rajendran,
Balasubramanian, and Taherzadeh (2013).
6.5. Thermal and acoustic insulation materials

It is estimated that buildings consume about 40% of the world’s global energy pro-
duction, 25% of the water, and 40% of the resource available globally. Textile waste
can be effectively used as a thermal insulation material (Islam & Bhat, 2019). The
thermal insulation properties depend on the porosity and tortuosity of that material.
Textile fabrics consist of interconnected voids, which give rise to its thermal insulation.
Further, the porous structure of textile materials provides sound absorption. Waste
textile fabrics can be directly used for thermal or sound-insulation purposes by simply
encasing cut pieces of waste textiles into nonwoven fabrics. Nonwoven fabrics made
of shoddy are commonly used as insulation materials. The thermal and sound insu-
lation properties of various materials are shown in Tables 6 and 7, respectively. Wazna,
Gounni, Bouari, Alami, and Cherkaoui (2019) reported nonwovens developed using
acrylic and wool waste for thermal insulation purposes. Similarly, Patnaik, Mvubu,
Table 6. Summary of thermal insulation properties of various materials (Islam & Bhat, 2019).
Thermal Relative thermal
conductivity, conductivity, air
Materials Thickness, (m) Density (kg/m3) (W/mK) (0.026) = 1
Recycled polyester (rPET) 0.016 62.5 0.035 (0.003) 1.35
Polyester (85% waste + 15% BiCO) 80 0.0467–.0487 1.80–1.87
100% wool waste from carpet 0.03 45 0.0311–0.0339 1.20–1.30
50% Coring wool waste 50% Recycled 0.016 62.5 0.032 (0.004) 1.23
polyester (CWP)
Cotton (recycled) 25–45 0.039–0.044 1.50–1.69
Sunflower stem sponge/cotton waste/ 0.0871 3.35
epoxy (36.36/36.36/27.27)
100% Acrylic (spinning waste) 14.571 0.043–0.0486 1.65–1.87
60% nylon/spandex (NS)_40% 0.01 0.0953 3.67
polyurethane (PU)
Jute (68%) + binder (20%) +shives 0.0812 26.1 0.0458 1.76
(12%)
Flax (68%) + binder (20%) +shives 0.0774 32.1 0.0429 1.65
(12%)
75% FLAX, 25% BiCO 0.087 22.8 0.0495 1.9
Technical hemp (64%) + binder (20%) 0.0796 29.6 0.0475 1.83
+shives (16%)
Hemp fibres + cellulose fibres (60:40) 30–60 0.046–0.047 1.77–1.81
Banana and polypropylene (pp) fibre 980–1040 0.157–0.182 6.04–7.00
Polyurethane foam 30–80 0.02–0.027 0.77–1.04
Glass wool 10 92.5 0.04 1.54
Mineral wool (MW) 36 0.040–0.045 1.54–1.73
Rockwool 80–200 0.025–0.035 0.96–1.35
Fibre glass 24–112 0.035–0.032 1.23–1.35
92
Table 7. Summary of acoustic insulation properties of various materials (Islam & Bhat, 2019).
NRC (250–2000 Hz) 0.75 0.6 0.55 0.8 0.45 0.89 0.6
Z. KAMBLE AND B. K. BEHERA
Avg./weighted α 0.75 0.6 0.35 0.55 0.063 0.079

Sound 3000 0.765 0.643 0.698 0.639 0.543 0.721
absorption 2000 0.68 0.96 0.95 1 0.84
coefficient 1600 0.91 0.93 0.081 0.147
(α) at 1250 0.77
different 1000 0.85 0.9 0.71 1.01 0.63 0.044 0.047
frequency 800 0.76 0.55 0.048 0.048
Hz 500 0.84 0.5 0.33 0.79 0.25
250 0.55 0.15 0.13 0.31 0.11 0.089 0.104
125 0.35 0.15 0.1 0.08
Density (kg/m3) 249.4 80 40 58.82 48.06 81.4 65.6 130 91.5 100.7 78.9 89.2 106.1
Thickness (mm) 46 40 17 25.4 50.63 25.47 10 10.05 10.1 41.24 10 9.91 10.1 40
Insulation materials Polyester wastage Sheep Dorper Recycled Cotton/PES/ Cotton/PES/ Cotton/ Jute Jute Jute/PP Jute/PET/ Flax/Bico. Flax/PP Kenaf/PP Kenaf/PET/ Rigid PLLA Ramie
cutting polyester wool wool/ cotton Bico. Bico. PET/PP fibre felt PP (75/25) PP polyurethane fibre/
waste fibre/ recycled (40/40/20) (40/40/20) foam/textile PLLA
bicomponent polyester waste
fibre (50/50) (60/40)
(binder)
(80/20)
Textile Progress 93
Muniyasamy, Botha, and Anandjiwala (2015) developed nonwovens by using waste

wool and recycled polyester fibres. Further, textile waste reinforced composites can
also be used for thermal insulation. Çeken et al. (2012) developed a nonwoven sound
insulation panel with an electromagnetic shielding effect by sandwiching
randomly-oriented copper wires between nonwoven fabrics made from textile waste.
Rubino et al. (2019) developed sound-absorbing materials by using Merino wool fibres
extracted from pre-consumer waste. They obtained wool batting by carding and
scouring. They impregnated the wool batting with two different binder materials,
namely chitosan and gum Arabic. They reported the developed material’s thermal
conductivity between 0.049 and 0.060 W/(m K). They also concluded that more-porous
samples with low airflow resistance show better sound absorption in the mid and
high-frequency range. By contrast, the less porous samples show improved sound
absorption at low frequency. Seddeq, Aly, Marwa, and Elshakankery (2013) reported
sound-absorption properties of nonwoven fabrics made of waste fibres. Four different
nonwoven samples were studied by them, namely 70% (Polyester) + 20% (cotton and
wool), 80% (Polypropylene) + 20% (cotton and wool), 50% Cotton + 50% polyester,
100% jute fibre. Their study showed that their sound-absorption coefficient improved
with increasing frequency.
Composites reinforced with textile waste have been reported to produce thermal
and sound insulation effects. Binici, Eken, Dolaz, Aksogan, and Kara (2014) developed
thermal and sound insulation boards using sunflower stalks, cotton and textile waste,
and stubble fibres as reinforcements with urea-formaldehyde adhesive resins and
gypsum as a binder material. They produced boards with gypsum and different
percentages of epoxy resin. Their study showed that boards made from sunflower
stem and stalk fibres and cotton fibres, and epoxy resin showed the highest thermal
conductivity coefficient value and ultrasonic sound penetration velocity than boards
made from sunflower stem and stalk fibres and epoxy resin. Also, they applied the
boards produced using sunflower stalks, textile waste, and gypsum to the wall of a
room of an office to measure acoustic and thermal insulation properties. They
observed that an office with thermal insulation absorbed more sound. After 60 min-
utes of heating and cooling, the temperature was higher for an office with the
insulation material than for an office without the insulation material. Hassanin,
Candan, Demirkir, and Hamouda (2018) developed thermal insulation composite
boards by using Tetra Pak and wool fibre waste. Lou, Lin, and Su (2005) reported a
functional composite for sound absorption using nonwoven selvedges from polyester
and polypropylene nonwovens. The nonwoven selvedges were usually cut from the
fabric and discarded as waste but they shredded the selvedges into fragments of
size 4 mm and the polyester and polypropylene fibres were physically blended and
compression-moulded at 180°C for 20 minutes to produce a composite material having
a thickness of 17 mm. Their study concluded that the composites exhibited excellent
sound-absorption performance for frequencies above 2000 Hz.
Textile waste can also be mixed into polyurethane (PU) foam to improve its thermal
and sound insulation. Sair et al. (2018) developed a PU foam reinforced with hemp
fibre. Their study found that the thermal conductivity of PU foam increased with an
increase in hemp-fibre content. Tiuc, Vermeşan, Gabor, and Vasile (2016) developed
PU foam mixed with textile waste fibres such as nylon, acrylic, and modal. Their study
concluded that the PU foam mixed with 40 wt% of textile waste showed the maximum
noise reduction coefficient of 0.593.
6.6. Activated carbon production and carbon black

Conventionally, activated carbon is produced from coal, coconut shells, peach pits,
sawdust, wood, lignin, petroleum coke, peat, and carbon black (Saleem, Bin, Hijab,
Mackey, & McKay, 2019). Wanassi et al. (2017) reported that waste cotton could be
used as a precursor for developing an activated carbon, and that particular activated
carbon could remove Alizarin S dye from effluent. Chen, Qian, et al. (2019), in their
study, developed activated carbon from cotton textile waste. Carbon black can also
be made, and it is used in rubber and plastics as a reinforcing agent, in pigments,
coatings, in the adsorption of pollutants, as a colouring agent for ink, paints, resins,
and films, and as a conductive agent in electronic equipment (Singh & Vander Wal,
2018; Application Examples of Carbon Black, n.d.).
6.7. Dye absorbing materials

The demand for purification of textile industry effluents is increasing due to increased
environmental concerns (Radetic, Radojevic, Ilic, Mihailovic, & Jovancic, 2009). Radetic
et al. (2009) developed nonwovens, by using wool fibres extracted from secondhand
military knitted pullovers to decolorise textile industry effluent. Two different types
of chemical modification techniques, namely chitosan and hydrogen peroxide, were
used. The chitosan-treated, hydrogen-peroxide treated, and untreated nonwoven
fabrics were characterized by their ability in effluent dye decolouration for four
different dyes: basic, reactive, direct, and metal complex dyes and they also reported
on the effect of temperature, dye concentration, time, and pH on dye sorption
behaviour. The dye uptake by the nonwoven fabrics was measured as the difference
between initial and final concentrations of dyes in the solution. Their study found
that modification of the fibre coupled with chemical treatment improved
dye-absorption capacity. Meng et al. (2019) reported about recyclable carboxylated
cellulose beads with high specific surface area developed from waste cotton to
remove the cationic dye methylene blue.
6.8. Fibre production

With increasing textile industry waste, there is a need for new recycling strategies
with minimum environmental impact to help to develop a circular economy. Haslinger
et al. (2019) developed regenerated cellulose fibres from 50/50 cotton/polyester
blended textile waste. The selective dissolution of cotton was performed, and the
ionic liquid polyester was recovered. The cotton/polyester blended textiles were sub-
jected to 1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non-5-enium acetate ([DBNH][OAc]) for 1-hour at 80 °C.
The cellulose obtained was extruded through a multi-hole spinneret to produce
multifilament yarn. The spun fibres had properties similar to lyocell fibres. Haule et al.
(2016) developed cellulose fibres by using waste cotton fabrics and indigo-dyed denim
fabrics. The waste fabrics were firstly thoroughly washed and disintegrated into pulp
Textile Progress 95
by using a mechanical beater. The pulp was then dissolved by using N-methylmorpholine
N-oxide (NMMO) solution. A spinning dope composed of 9% cellulose, 13% water,
and 78% NMMO was produced to spin the yarn. They concluded that the tensile
properties and wet-strength recovery of fibres developed using waste cotton fabrics
and indigo-dyed denim fabrics are better than lyocell fibres. Further to this, they
showed that the pulp developed using cotton-based waste textiles could be blended
with wood pulp to produce cellulose fibres with properties similar to lyocell. De Silva
and Byrne (2017) reported higher tensile strength in those made from cellulose fibres
developed from cotton waste lint than wood pulp fibre.
6.9. Yarns and fabrics production

The fibre waste generated in the spinning mills and the fibres extracted from the
waste textiles, i.e. shoddy, can be successfully used for yarn production. Rotor-spinning
technology is more popular for shoddy yarns manufacturing than ring spinning due
to its ability to handle fibres with higher length variation at a lower production cost.
The rotor-spinning process and its parameters are explained elsewhere (Béchir,
Mohamed, & Béchir, 2018; Demiroz Gun & Oner, 2019; Taher, Bechir, Mohamed, &
Faouzi, 2009). Various studies have shown that soft waste generated during the yarn
spinning process can be recycled to produce yarn for different applications (Bedez
Ute, Celik, & Bunyamin, 2019; Demiroz Gun & Oner, 2019; Halimi, Hassen, Azzouz, &
Sakli, 2007; Yilmaz, Yelkovan, & Tirak, 2017). The shoddy has uneven fibre length
distribution, which negatively influences the spinning process and yarn quality, there-
fore, various studies suggest blending waste fibres or shoddy with virgin fibres such
as cotton and polyester to produce good quality yarn (Halimi et al., 2007; Kaplan &
Göktepe, 2006; Hasani & Tabatabaei, 2011; Hasani, Tabatabaei, & Semnani, 2010; Khan,
Hossain, & Sarker, 2015; Taher et al., 2009). The yarn produced by blending virgin
cotton with shoddy is relatively better in terms of tensile strength and elongation
and it is said to be cheap (Wanassi, Azzouz, & Hassen, 2016). Panipat in India is the
biggest shoddy yarn manufacturing hub. Wanassi et al. (2016) reported on rotor-spun
yarn using dyed cotton yarn waste from the denim industry. They produced yarns
with three different counts, namely 10, 15, and 20 Ne, using virgin and recycled
cotton fibres in the weight proportion of 50:50. They compared the mechanical prop-
erties of blended yarns with 100% virgin cotton yarn. Their study concluded that the
tensile strength and elongation of the blended yarns was 73–84% less than 100%
virgin cotton yarn. Also, the imperfections in blended yarns in terms of uniformity,
thin and thick places, hairiness were higher than 100% virgin cotton yarn. However,
this irregularity in the yarn gave a desirable effect on denim fabrics after washing
and the blended yarn’s manufacturing cost is 33.5% less than 100% virgin cotton
yarn. In Panipat, the processed waste textiles are used to produce school blazer fab-
rics, drapes, doormats, prayer rugs, blankets and bedsheets (Handique, 2010). The
yarns developed from shoddy are used to produce woven, knitted, or non-woven
fabrics. These fabrics are used for garment linings, household items, furniture uphol-
stery, insulation materials, automobile sound absorption materials, automobile car-
peting, and toys (Voncina, 2000). Nonwoven fabrics developed using shoddy can also
be used to develop carpet backings. The Portuguese brand ‘Vintage for a Cause’
produces clothing from used textiles. Similarly, there are multiple brands such as
Evrnu®, Bethany Williams, Ecoalf, and Doodlage who have developed yarns or fabrics
from waste textiles.
6.10. Paper making

Textile waste has been proved a suitable raw material for papermaking (SA, 2018).
Ruoyuan, Kimura, and Haruhiro (2010) developed paper using silk fibre waste to reinforce
composite material. They firstly cut the silk fibres to 5 mm length and beat by using a
household beater. They produced paper as per the JIS P8222 standard. Opoku-Asare and
Yeboah (2013) developed art paper using mulberry plant fibres and waste fabrics of linen,
cotton, acetate, wool, nylon, and polyester. Their study concluded that the paper could
be used for applications such as handwriting, bookbinding, lettering, calligraphy, card
loom weaving, paper bead making, packaging, printmaking, and origami.
6.11. Clean solid fuel

Textile waste, especially cotton waste, is a potential source of energy. Hydrothermal
carbonization is a simple and environmentally friendly process compared to pyrolysis
and gasification (Zhuang et al., 2018). Qi et al. (2021) prepared hydrochars by employ-
ing cotton textile waste for hydrothermal carbonization and catalyzing with FeCl3.
This treatment enhances the thermal characteristics and combustion properties of
the hydrochar. Xu et al. (2021) reported hydrothermal carbonization of cotton waste
using surfactants to produce clean solid fuel.
6.12. Flexible strain sensor

Flexible sensors have attracted attention for applications in motion recording, health
monitoring, heated garments and sweat analysis (Chen, An, et al., 2019). Studies have
proved the use of waste cotton textiles to develop flexible strain sensors (Liang et al.,
2020; Zhang et al., 2017). Chen, An, et al. (2019) carbonized waste knitted fabric in
a quartz tube under nitrogen atmosphere. They heated the tube from room tempera-
ture to 150°C and maintained it for 30 minutes, then continued the heating up to
450°C and held it for 30 minutes. Heating then continued up to 750 oC and was kept
there for 60 minutes before the furnace was allowed to cool down; the product was
carbonized cotton fabric. They developed a composite using natural rubber latex and
the carbonized cotton fabric and reported stable resistance under repeated stretch/
release cycles. This type of strain sensor could be used to monitor human finger and
arm motions.
6.13. Cellulose beads for drug delivery

Cellulose beads demonstrate high porosity, high mechanical stiffness, high surface
area, and low density (Zeng, Wang, & Byrne, 2020) and range in size from micrometres
to millimetres depending on the shaping method. Zeng, Wang, and Byrne (2019)
developed cellulose beads using cotton denim fabric. They shredded the cotton denim
Textile Progress 97
into 0.2 mm powder and treated it with a 10% w/w solution of sodium hydroxide at
90°C for 15 hours. They dried the obtained slurry at 80°C for 12 hours then the dried
material was dissolved in an ionic liquid at 100°C while stirring and the solution was
then extruded into distilled water along with shearing. The drugs were loaded into
these porous beads. Zeng et al showed that the developed cellulose beads exhibit
70–90% drug release in five minutes. Similarly, Satirapipathkul and Dungsri (2016)
reported a micro-cellulose sponge using waste cotton as a controlled drug-release
carrier, however, it must be understood that complete removal of dye materials and
disinfection of the textiles is essential to develop such a biomedical product.
6.14. Textile-waste reinforced polymer composites and their applications

6.14.1. Different techniques of composite development
There are four primary ways in which discarded or waste textiles can be used as
reinforcement for composite manufacturing. First, by using waste textiles in the fabric
form as it is, second by turning the waste textiles into shoddy, third by reorganizing
the shoddy into textile structures such as yarns, woven or non-woven fabric, and
fourth by transforming the waste textiles into nano- or micro-structures to be used
as filler in composites.
6.14.1.1 Discarded fabrics as a reinforcement. The compression-moulding technique

is one of the simplest ways to produce composites from textile waste in the fabric
form. The reinforcement in the form of waste textile fabric impregnated with
the matrix material is set in the mould, and the mould is put within two heated
plates of the compression moulding machine to cause the resin to crosslink This
technique can be used for both thermoset and thermoplastic matrix materials.
Zou, Reddy, and Yang (2011) developed composites using waste polyester/
cotton (63/35%) fabrics directly by compression moulding. They reported several
advantages of this technique; namely, no need for fibre separation, polyester fibre
within the reinforcement is used as a matrix, and waste textiles with different
colours can be used since composite applications are not aesthetically demanding.
Also, the accessories present within the waste textiles will melt and become part
of the composite. They also used plasticizer 2-phenyl phenol (2 P) and glycerol in
three different amounts to reduce polyester’s melting point. The plasticizer was
dissolved in a controlled amount of ethanol and showered onto polyester/cotton
fabric in three different percentages on the weight of the fabrics. Table 8 shows
different textile waste fabrics, matrix materials, reinforcement, and composite
development techniques.
6.14.1.2 Shoddy as reinforcement. The shoddy obtained by shredding waste

textiles can be used to develop polymeric composites in various ways. Kamble
and Behera (2020; Kamble, Behera, Kimura, & Haruhiro, 2020; Kamble & Behera,
2021a) reported compression-moulded thermoset composites reinforced with
cotton shoddy and polyester fibre waste in the web form. The detailed process
of composite development is described in Figure 11. They first turned the cotton
textile waste into shoddy by using a rag-tearing machine. The rag-tearing machine
Table 8. Different textile waste fabrics, matrix materials, reinforcement, and composite develop-
ment techniques.
Reinforcement Composite
development development
Waste material Matrix technique technique Reference
Polyester woven Urea-formaldehyde, Cutting the polyester Compression moulding (Sadikoglu, Shikim,
fabrics, yarn ammonium fabric and yarn (700 N) and drying Guleryuz, &
waste sulphate, and flour waste to random at 75°C for 2 hours Eryurek, 2003)
(100:5:10) dimensions
Cotton/polyester Polyester present Reinforcement was Compression moulding (Ramamoorthy,
(50: 50) within the used as it is in at 280 °C, 20 KPa Persson, &
plain-weave bed reinforcement fabric form pressure Skrifvars, 2014)
linen fabrics
Cotton/polyester Polyester present Reinforcement was Compression moulding (Ramamoorthy
(50: 50) within the used as it is in at 280 °C, 20 KPa et al., 2014)
plain-weave bed reinforcement and fabric form pressure
linen fabrics plasticiser glycerol/
2-phenylphenol
Cotton/polyester Soybean oil-based Reinforcement was Compression moulding (Ramamoorthy
(50: 50) thermoset resin used as it is in at 185 °C, 180 KP et al., 2014)
plain-weave bed fabric form pressure
linen fabrics
Cotton/polyester Thermoplastic A laminate of waste Compression moulding (Ramamoorthy
(50: 50) bi-component fabrics and at 140 °C, 110 KP et al., 2014)
plain-weave bed CoPET/PET fibres bi-component pressure
linen fabrics CoPET/PET fibres
nonwoven was
made
Plain woven Polyester present Reinforcement was Compression moulding (Zou et al., 2011)
polyester and within the used as it is in at 280 °C,
cotton (65/35%) reinforcement fabric form 35 seconds
fabrics
Cotton/polyester Acrylated epoxidized Reinforcement was Compression moulding (Ramamoorthy,
(50: 50) soybean oil used as it is in at 160 °C, Skrifvars, Alagar,
plain-weave fabric form 5 minutes, 25 bar & Akhtar, 2018)
fabrics
Discarded denim Polypropylene film Reinforcement was Compression moulding (Wei et al., 2015)
fabric used as it is in at 170 °C,
fabric form 5 minutes, 3 MPa
Denim fabric waste Polyester resin Fabrics of appropriate Compression moulding, (Temmink, Baghaei,
size were cut and VARI, Resin transfer & Skrifvars,
dried moulding, hand 2018)
lay-up
Figure 11. The textile waste reinforced composite development process (Kamble & Behera, 2020).
Textile Progress 99
consisted of a series of rollers clothed with wires or pins. The shoddy was then
processed on a carding machine to produce a fibre web. Further, the web released
by the carding machine was wrapped on the wooden roller to get a multi-layered
web. This multi-layered web was then used as reinforcement. The epoxy resin
was applied onto the fibre web, and composite material was produced using the
compression moulding technique. With the above-mentioned technique, good
quality composites could be developed. However, sometimes handling a delicate
web becomes difficult, and it is better to bind the web by some mechanical
means such as needle punching. Further, the vacuum-assisted resin infusion
technique is not convenient for the preform in the web form because the fibre
orientation gets distorted during resin infusion. Any change of fibre orientation
will directly influence the mechanical properties of the composite (Kamble et al., 2020).
Table 9 shows shoddy developed from different fibres waste, matrix materials, and
composite development techniques. Further, Kamble et al. (2021) incorporated
cellulosic microparticles and graphene-based nanoparticles into the cotton shoddy
web reinforced epoxy composites to enhance the mechanical, dynamic mechanical,
and thermogravimetric properties. To further enhance the mechanical properties
of waste cotton shoddy reinforced composites, Kamble and Behera (2021b)
developed a hybrid composite of cotton shoddy with glass unidirectional and
jute nonwoven fabric. The hybrid-composite development process is depicted in
Figure 12(b). a notable improvement in mechanical properties could be observed
upon hybridizing cotton shoddy with glass UD preform (Figure 12(b)).
6.14.1.3 Yarn, woven or nonwoven fabrics developed from waste textiles as

reinforcement. The discarded textiles are turned shoddy by using a rag-tearing
machine and the shoddy is then reorganized into yarn which has acceptable
strength and can be used to develop 2 D or 3 D woven preforms. Umar et al. (2017)
developed thermoset unsaturated polyester composites reinforced with cotton
woven fabrics. The woven fabrics were developed with 100% cotton warp yarn
and two different types of weft yarns, namely soil waste, and knitting waste. The
vacuum-assisted resin infusion (VARI) technique was used to produce composites.
The VARI technique consists of a vacuum bag in which the reinforcement is placed,
and resin is allowed to flow from one end to the other. Table 10 shows that various
authors have reported reinforcement structures developed by using disparate types
of textile waste. Khurshid et al. (2020) reported processing techniques to recycle
waste carbon fibre for thermoset composite production. The carbon fibre waste in
the dry form, i.e. waste generated during yarn and fabric manufacturing, can be
easily converted into wet-laid and dry-laid nonwovens. The wet-laid nonwovens can
be developed by using the papermaking technique to produce isotropic structures
which can be easily turned into composites.
6.14.1.4 Nano/microstructures developed from waste textiles as reinforcement. Large

specific surface area, high strength, and low density are some unique properties of
nanocellulose (Prado et al., 2019). Nanocellulose is used in a variety of applications
ranging from food packaging (Dhar, Bhardwaj, Kumar, & Katiyar, 2014), tissue
scaffolds for cellular culture (Lin & Dufresne, 2014), to nanocomposites (Habibi,
Table 9. Shoddy developed from disparate waste textiles and their composite development techniques.
100
Waste material Matrix Reinforcement development technique Composite development technique Reference
Denim fibre waste Urea-melamine dispersed Fibre and resin mixing by using the kinetic mixer Compression moulding (130 °C, 30 bar, (Gomes, Fangueiro, & Gonilho, 2007)
in water 5 minutes)
Cotton/acrylic/ other High-density polyethylene Defibrillation of waste textiles, homogeneous Compression moulding (Finkler, Nunes, Zattera, & Zeni, 2006)
(50/47.5/2.5) mixing of the matrix using the machine and (150 °C,138KPa,5 minutes)
compression moulding
Waste silk fibre Polypropylene The fibres were cut in the dimension of 1–5 mm Extrusion and then injection moulding (Taşdemir, Koçak, Usta, Akalin, &
Waste cotton fibre (210–230 °C, 40 bar) Merdan, 2007)
Waste silk fibre Polybutylene succinate Silk fibres were cut to 5 mm length and silk fibre Compression moulding (140 °C, 30 minutes) (Ruoyuan et al., 2010)
(PBS) paper was produced. Further, the laminate of
silk paper and PBS film was compression
moulded
Z. KAMBLE AND B. K. BEHERA
Nylon/polyacrylic/ model Polyurethane Waste fibres were used as it is Mixing textile waste into polyurethane (Tiuc et al., 2016)
(15/40/45) formulation
Denim fabric Polypropylene Garnetting to produce shoddy Injection moulding at 195 °C (Petrucci et al., 2015)
Cotton fly from industry Green epoxy resin Used as it is Compression moulding (80 °C, 30 minutes, (Hassan et al., 2020)
100 bar)
Waste cotton fabrics Polypropylene The waste fabrics were shredded and processed Compression moulding (Mishra et al., 2014a)
on a carding machine to produce a hybrid
web by mixing polypropylene fibres in
different weight proportions.
Waste cotton fibres Natural hydraulic lime Used as it is Fibres were dispersed into the mould, and (Barbero-Barrera, Pombo, &
matrix was applied. Curing was performed Navacerrada, 2016)
for seven days at room temperature
Sunflower stalk fibres, Epoxy resin and Gypsum The reinforcement was grounded Compression moulding (Binici et al., 2014)
cotton waste, textile
waste, and stubble
Cotton waste (CW), textile Cement Used as it is CW and TAW were mixed with concrete in (Binici et al., 2010)
ash waste (TAW) different weight proportions, and then
compression moulded at 40 tonnes
pressure for 1 min, cured for 24 hours.
Polypropylene carpet fibre Cement Fibres having a length 20 mm were used as it is Fibres were mixed to concrete in different (Mohammadhosseini et al., 2020)
weight proportions, and concrete blocks
were developed
Wool fibre waste Low-density polyethylene Used as it is Tetra Pak and wool fibres waste was (Hassanin et al., 2018)
from Tetra Pak waste mixed and compression moulded at
190–200 °C,145psi, 3 minutes
Polyester and polypropylene Polypropylene The selvedges were shredded into fragments of Compression moulding at 180°C for (Lou et al., 2005)
nonwoven selvedges size 4 mm. Polyester and polypropylene fibres 20 minutes
were physically blended.
Textile Progress 101
Figure 12. Cotton shoddy and glass UD hybrid composite development process (With permission
from Elsevier) (a) and mechanical properties of cotton shoddy/glass UD hybrid composites. (Note:
SH represents cotton shoddy/epoxy composites, SHUD 13 represents cotton shoddy and 13 wt%
of glass UD preform reinforced epoxy composite).
Table 10. Different reinforcement structures produced from waste textiles and their composites
Composite
Reinforcement development development
100% Cotton Epoxy resin Carding and needle punching of Vacuum-assisted (Baccouch et al.,
100% Polyester waste fabric to produce a resin infusion 2020)
nonwoven fabric (24-hour curing
Cotton/polyester at 1 bar)
(60/40)
Polyester fibre Polylactic acid Waste in the form of the cord Compression (Kaneda & Kimura,
selvedge waste was used as it is. moulding 2007)
in water jet (190 °C, 20 MPa,
weaving 5 minutes)
Waste denim fabric Epoxy resin The recovered fibres were Vacuum-assisted (Meng et al., 2020)
processed on the carding resin infusion
machine, and needle
punched to produce a
nonwoven fabric.
Cotton and jute Unsaturated The waste cotton and jute Vacuum-assisted (Frydrych et al.,
waste from polyester fibres were used to produce resin infusion 2018)
industry resin yarns and subsequently used
to produce plain weave
cotton and jute fabric.
Mixed fibre waste Polypropylene Mixed fibres waste was Compression (Mishra et al.,
shredded, and the yarn was moulding 2014b)
made by mixing 40% of it
with remaining
polypropylene fibres. 3 D
woven preforms were
developed.
Cotton fabric waste Epoxy resin Fabric waste was shredded and Compression (Kamble and
the yarn was made. 2 D and moulding Behera, n.d.)
3 D woven preforms were (125 °C,
developed. 60 minutes)
Lucia, & Rojas, 2010). Many researchers have reported nano/microstructures such
as nano cellulose, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and nanofibrous membranes
developed from waste textiles for composite applications. Prado et al. (2019)
reported a one-step process of the nanocellulose extraction from viscose yarn
Table 11. Nano or micromaterials developed from disparate waste textiles and their composite
Reinforcement development Composite development
Waste cotton Soy protein Sulphuric acid hydrolysis of Solvent casting method (Huang et al.,
fabric isolate waste cotton fabric directly 2020)
without any pre-treatment
to produce Nano cellulose
Three-step oxidation of cotton
fabric to produce Nano
cellulose
Wastes of Sodium Micro-sized fibres were Cold press and drying (Schettini et al.,
tomato and alginate recovered from tomato and 2013)
hemp fibres hemp. A paste of sodium
alginate and fibres was
made and applied to the
mould
Wool fibre Polypropylene Dipping the fibres into liquid Extrusion and then (Salama, Hassabo,
Cotton fibre nitrogen to freeze it and injection moulding at El-Sayed,
then crushing to powder 200 °C Salem, &
form Popescu, 2017)
Jute fibres Polyvinyl Jute fibre milling to Nano or Ultrasonication and (Baheti & Militky,
alcohol micro size particles casting on Teflon sheet 2013)
Jute fibres Polylactic acid and room temperature (Baheti, Militky, &
curing Marsalkova,
2013)
Waste wool Polyacrylonitrile Wool fabrics were Polyacrylonitrile was (Zhong et al.,
fabrics decolourized, purified, and dissolved into 2020)
pulverized. The wool N,N-dimethylformamide,
powder was dissolved into and then WK and IL
ionic liquid (IL) were added, stirred to
1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium get electrospinning
chloride, and wool keratin solution and the
(WK) was extracted. electrospun membrane
was prepared.
waste in their study. The viscose rayon yarn waste was hydrolysed using sulphuric
acid (64 wt%) at 40°C to obtain the nanocellulose. An acid hydrolysis reaction
time of 5 minutes shows the regular shape of nanocellulose. Wang et al. (2017)
prepared cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) from waste cotton clothes. The CNCs
were prepared in two steps. In the first step, cellulose was obtained from waste
clothing. The cotton cloth is pulped in this step, and this pulp is treated with 10%
sodium hydroxide at 70 °C for 2 hours. Further, the decolouration of the pulp is
achieved by the treatment of 1.5% hydrogen peroxide. In the second step, acid
hydrolysis of celluloses was done in a mixture of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric
acid, and deionized water with a volume ratio of 3:1:11 at 55 °C for 7 hours
whilst applying ultrasonics. The length and diameter of CNC extracted from
discarded cotton clothes range from 28 to 470 nm and 3 to 35 nm respectively.
Table 11 depicts nano- or micro-structures developed from waste textiles and
their composites.
6.14.2. Mechanical properties of composites reinforced with textile waste

The fundamental problem associated with textile waste fibres or fibres extracted from
waste textile materials is the very wide variation in their mechanical properties (Kamble
et al., 2021), so the mechanical properties of resulting composites vary greatly, whilst also
depending on the composite-processing technology employed. Various studies have
proved that textile-waste reinforced composites have comparable mechanical properties
to virgin-fibre reinforced composites. Some mechanical properties of textile waste rein-
forced composites are reported in Table 12.
6.14.3. Applications of polymer composites reinforced with textile waste

6.14.3.1 Automotive components. A large amount of fibre-reinforced composite
components are used in automotive applications. Kamble et al. (2020) reported
epoxy composites reinforced with waste cotton textiles and filled with graphite-
oxide nanoparticles. They stated that epoxy composites reinforced with cotton
fibres extracted from waste textiles could be used in both the visible and
concealed automotive components. Also, they have compared the typical values
of the mechanical properties for automotive applications with the mechanical
properties of the developed composites, as shown in Table 13. In another study,
Kamble et al. (2021) reported reduced graphene oxide-filled waste cotton fibre
reinforced epoxy composites for application in interior furniture of trains and
buses. Further, Barnett, Gilbert, and Penumadu (2021) developed recycled carbon
fibre nonwoven-reinforced thermoplastic composites for automotive applications.
6.14.3.2 Thermal and sound insulation materials. As mentioned earlier, composites

reinforced with textile waste have been reported to produce thermal and sound
insulation effects. Binici et al. (2014) formed thermal and sound insulation boards
using sunflower stalks, cotton, textile waste, and stubble fibres as reinforcements
and epoxy resins gypsum as a binder material. Their study shows that boards made
from sunflower stem & stalk fibres, cotton fibres, and epoxy resin show the highest
thermal conductivity coefficient value and ultrasonic sound penetration velocity
than boards made from sunflower stem & stalk fibres and epoxy resin. Also, they
applied the boards produced by using sunflower stalks, textile waste, and gypsum
on the wall of a room of an office to measure acoustic and thermal insulation
properties. They observed that an office with thermal insulation absorbs more
sound. After 60 minutes of heating and cooling, the temperature was found higher
for offices with insulation material than for offices without insulation material.
Hassanin et al. (2018) developed thermal insulation composite boards using Tetra
Pak and wool fibre waste and reported the developed board’s application in building
materials. Lou et al. (2005) revealed a functional composite for sound absorption
by using nonwoven selvedges from polyester and polypropylene nonwovens. Their
study confirmed that developed composites exhibit excellent sound absorption
performance for frequencies above 2000 Hz. Textile waste can also be mixed in
polyurethane (PU) foam to improve its thermal and sound insulation. Sair et al.
(2018) developed PU foam reinforced with hemp fibre. Their study identified that
the thermal conductivity of PU foam increases with an increase in hemp fibre
content. Tiuc et al. (2016) evolved PU foam mixed with textile waste fibres such
as nylon, acrylic, and modal. Their study showed that PU foam mixed with 40 wt%
of textile waste demonstrated a maximum noise reduction coefficient of 0.593.
Table 12. Mechanical properties of composites reinforced with textile waste

(Note: i represents izod, and c represents charpy impact).
(Taşdemir, (Koçak,
(González-Chi, (Bodur, Koçak, Usta, Taşdemir,
Vázquez, & Bakkal, & Akalin, & Usta,
(Bodur, Englund, Gómez-Cruz, Sonmez, (Zou et al., Merdan, (Taşdemir (Ruoyuan Merdan, & (Koçak et al.,
Reference & Bakkal, 2017) 2002) 2016) 2011) 2008) et al., 2008) et al., 2010) Akalin, 2008) 2008)
Impact 70 i 116 i 40.9 J/m i 3.6 i 12 i 50 i 5.5 i 5.4 i
strength
(KJ/m )
2
Flexural 35 (1000) 11 (285) 45.8 (6400) 100 (2100)

strength,
MPa
(Modulus,
MPa)
Tensile 12.5 (800) 16 (750) 9 (380) 29.8 (2900) 38.8 (696.8) 36.7 (336.4) 67 (1400) 30.7 (455.3) 30.9 (418.1)
strength,
MPa
(Modulus,
MPa)
Composite Single screw Compression Single screw Compression Injection Injection Compression Injection Injection
making extruder moulding extruder moulding moulding moulding moulding moulding moulding
technique
Matrix Low density High density Low density Polyester fibre Polycarbonate Polycarbonate Poly-butylene High density High density
polyethylene poly poly present succinate poly poly
ethylene ethylene within ethylene ethylene
fabric
Reinforcement Glass fibre/ Waste Chopped Polyester/ Waste silk Waste cotton Waste silk in Waste silk Waste cotton
waste banana waste cotton (5 mm (5 mm paper fibres fibres
cotton stem cotton (65/35) fibre fibre form 3 wt% (1, 3 wt% (1,
fabric fibres fabrics waste length) length) (40 wt%) 2.5 and 2.5 and
(2.5/25 wt%) (30 wt%) (25 wt%) fabrics 5 mm 5 mm
length length
mixed) mixed)
Table 13. Comparison of mechanical properties of composites for automotive applications (Kamble
et al., 2020).
Typical values for Cotton/epoxy composite Cotton/epoxy composite
Unit Automotive industry without graphite oxide with 0.3% graphite oxide
Processing technique Hot pressing Hot pressing Hot pressing
Natural fibre content Mass % 65 (Bast fibre) 37.42 (recovered waste 37.42 (recovered waste
cotton fibres) cotton fibres)
Polymer Mass % 35 (epoxy) 62.58 (epoxy) 62.58 (epoxy)
Density g/cm3 0.8–0.85 1.23 1.23
Flexural strength MPa 50–70 83.58 106.54
Flexural Modulus MPa 4000–4500 5111.74 6836.52
Impact strength mJ/mm2 14–20 6.69 6.85
Tensile strength MPa 40–50 83.75 86
Similarly, Tanamachi, Hatakeyama, Funabashi, and Hatakeyama (2007) reported that

textile waste fabrics mixed polyurethane foam showed good thermal insulation. Rubino
et al. (2019) provided details about composite materials made of wool fibres extracted
from waste woollen textiles and chitosan and Gum Arabic for thermal and sound
insulation applications for the building industry. Muthuraj, Lacoste, Lacroix, and
Bergeret (2019) developed thermal insulation bio-composites using different waste
materials such as rice and wheat husk, wood fibres, and textile waste fibres.
6.14.3.3 Concrete and bricks. The fundamental problem associated with concrete
is crack development due to its brittleness (Mohammadhosseini, Yatim, Sam,
& Awal, 2017) but its ductility can be improved by adding polymeric, ceramic
and metallic fibres such as steel, glass, nylon, polypropylene, and natural fibres.
(Zhao, Pan, (Alamri, Low, (Barbero-

Xu, & Yang, (Katori & (Hamouda (Baccouch (Baccouch (Baccouch (Ramamoorthy (Sadikoglu & Alothman, (Umar Barrera (Kamble
2018) Kimura, 2002) et al., 2019) et al., 2020) et al., 2020) et al., 2020) et al., 2018) et al., 2003) 2012) et al., 2017) et al., 2016) et al., 2020)
176 J/m i 70 i 8c 21 c 15 c 14 c 61 c 30 c 17.5 J c 6.69 i
11.8(1397) 80 (2600) 15 62.5 (4300) 7.18 (573) 150 (7500) 2 1 83.58 (5288)
9.9 (1803) 60 (3000) 5 (3500) 36.04 (3051) 31.42 33.44 (2290) 111.7 (11400) 27 73.29
(2856.7) (2652.2)
Compression Injection Compression Vacuum Vacuum Vacuum Compression Compression Compression Vacuum Hand lay up Compression
moulding moulding moulding assisted assisted assisted moulding moulding moulding assisted moulding
resin resin resin resin
infusion infusion infusion infusion
Polypropylene Poly-butylene Low density Epoxy resin Epoxy resin Epoxy resin Unsaturated Urea Epoxy resin Epoxy resin Natural Epoxy resin
succinate poly polyester formal hydraulic
ethylene resin dehyde, lime
ammonium
sulphate
and flour
Waste Silk fibres Waste wool Waste Waste Waste Waste cotton/ Polyetser Recycle Waste Waste cotton Garntted
poly (30% fibre/ cotton polyester cotton/ polyester woven cellulose cotton fibre waste
propylene volume Tetra pak (21 wt%) (25 wt%) polyester (50/50) fabric fibre woven cotton
carpet fraction) (15/85) (60/40) fabrics waste, paper fabric fibres
wt% (23 wt%) yarn waste
The fibre-reinforced concrete allows the production of lightweight structures

with high durability and economic savings. The textile materials do not suffer
corrosion problems, and also they can be placed as desired in fibre form, 2 D
or 3 D woven fabric form (Hegger & Voss, 2008). The addition of textile fibres to
the concrete improves its hardness, compressive strength and thermal stability
(Behera, Baheti, Militky, & Naeem, 2018). Mohammadhosseini et al. (2017)
revealed that incorporating waste polypropylene carpet fibres into the concrete
reduces its creep and shrinkage compared to plain concrete. In other research,
Mohammadhosseini, Tahir, and Sayyed (2018a) and, Mohammadhosseini, Tahir,
Mohd, Abdul Shukor, & Samadi (2018b) reported that the compressive strength
of composite was reduced by the inclusion of waste carpet polypropylene
fibres, but that there were improvements in tensile and flexural properties; the
addition of carpet fibre and palm oil fuel ash into the concrete reduced the
absorptivity of the concrete. Orasutthikul, Unno, and Yokota (2017) detailed that
the flexural strength of mortar reinforced with recycled nylon increased, and its
compressive strength was lowereded. Binici, Gemci, Aksogan, and Kaplan (2010)
produced bricks using cotton waste, textile ash, and cement. They confirmed
that the developed brick fulfilled their compressive, flexural strength, and water
absorption requirements and the bricks showed good thermal insulation equal
to that of concrete bricks whilst their density was less than that of cement
bricks. Algin and Turgut (2008) described bricks produced using cotton waste
generated in the spinning mill, limestone powder wastes, and cement. Their study
determined that the brick filled with 30% cotton waste satisfied compressive
and flexural strength requirements. Khan et al. (2020) demonstrated that fibres
such as glass, polyester, and polypropylene incorporated into the concrete
improved its compressive, flexural, and Charpy impact strength. The glass fibre
showed a better reinforcement effect than the polyester and polypropylene
fibres. Every year about 17 million tonnes of tyres are disposed of all over the
world. Malaiškiene, Nagrockiene, and Skripkiunas (2015) produced concrete
reinforced with tyre cords retrieved from waste tyres. They determined that the
waste tyre cord can supplant 4% fine aggregate by mass, with an increase in
the water intake of the concrete caused by the hydrophilicity of the tyre cord.
6.14.3.4 Biomedical applications. Textile waste, especially cellulose fibre waste, has
potential applications in biomedical applications. Kale and Gorade (2019) produced
a self-reinforced composite using medical cotton waste as a reinforcement and
microcrystalline cellulose dissolved in lithium chloride/N, N-dimethylacetamide
solvent system as the matrix material. The self-reinforced composite is propitious in
terms of a great interface between reinforcement and matrix, better value as a green
material, biodegradable and recyclable and is useful in biomaterials applications
such as the supporting material in fracture plaster. Zhong, Li, Wang, Wang, and
Yu (2020) reported on the development of a nanofibrous membrane developed
from waste wool fabrics which was characterized for antibacterial activity against
E. coli and S. aureus. The membrane showed inhibition of 89.21% against E. coli and
60.70% against S. aureus. Also, the membrane performed well in terms of its wetting
and water-transport performance. The developed membrane has the probable
application in protein separation and natural tissue material in the medical field.
Wang et al. (2017) prepared, from waste cotton clothes, CNC with high crystallinity
and good mechanical strength, and therefore they are a strong candidate for use
in biocomposites development for medical applications. Prado et al. (2019) formed
nanocellulose from viscose rayon yarn waste. They affirmed that the developed
nanocellulose could be used in tissue scaffolds for cellular culture development.
6.14.3.5 Packaging materials. Industrial packaging is one of the up-and-coming

applications where waste textiles can be successfully utilized. Rizal et al. (2021)
extracted cellulose nano fibrillated fibres (CNF) from waste cotton fabrics. They
reported improved mechanical, thermal, and morphological properties of PLA/
chitin biocomposites incorporating CNF for packaging applications. Prado et al
(Prado et al., 2019) stated the application of nanocellulose derived from waste
viscose rayon yarn in composites for food packaging. de Souza, Barbosa, and Rosa
(2020) produced nanocellulose from waste cotton fibres. Further, they developed
polylactic acid composites reinforced with nanocellulose. They concluded that the
developed composite’s mechanical properties are desirable for a food packaging
material. Huang, Tao, Ismail, and Wang (2020) prepared soy protein films reinforced
with CNCs from waste textiles for food packaging applications.
6.14.3.6 Plastic products reinforced with textile waste. Injection moulding is one of
the processes in which the waste textiles along polymeric matrix in short fibre form
can be easily moulded into shapes for various applications. Uchimaru, Kimura, and
Figure 13. Various products developed from textile waste reinforced composites (Uchimaru, 2020).
Figure 14. Stages of the life cycle of a product.
Sato (2013) evolved a ‘colour recycling system’ for waste textile recycling, which offers
the classification of waste textiles according to colour. In another study, Uchimaru,
Kimura, Sato, and Osako (2015) used the colour recycle system to segregate the
fibres as per their colour, and then fibres were crushed. The crushed fibres were
then mixed with a polypropylene matrix for injection moulding, and composite
specimens were developed for various applications such as magnet bars, rulers,
sheets, flower pots, card cases and book covers as shown in Figure 13 (Uchimaru,
2020). Zontti et al. (2015) produced composites by utilizing fibres recovered from
denim as reinforcement and thermoset epoxy, orthophtalic unsaturated polyester
polyurethane resin as matrix materials. They revealed applications of the developed
composites in fashion accessories such as bracelets and gemstone rings.
7. Life cycle analysis (LCA) of textile recycling techniques

Life cycle assessment is a technique used to assess the environmental aspects and
potential impacts of a particular product or process, or service (Finnveden et al.,
2009). The LCA of a specific recycling technique is necessary to evaluate its environ-
mental impact. The LCA consists of four stages: goal and scope definition, life-cycle
inventory analysis, and life-cycle impact assessment. The most popular variants of
LCA are cradle-to-grave and cradle-to-gate. Figure 14 shows the different LCA stages
of a product. The recyclability of any textile fibre depends on economic and environ-
mental gain from recycling that particular fibre (Muthu, Li, Hu, & Mok, 2012b). Muthu
et al. (2012b) developed the recyclability potential index (RPI) to quantify the potential
recyclability of commonly-used textiles fibres such as polyester, polypropylene, acrylic,
Table 14. Ranking in terms of recyclability of some

textile fibres (Muthu et al., 2012b).
Fibre Ranking in terms of recyclability
Polyester 1
Polypropylene 1
High-density polyethylene 2
Low-density polyethylene 3
Acrylic 4
Cotton 5
Wool 6
Viscose Rayon 7
Nylon 6 8
Nyon 66 9
Table 15. Environmental benefits of recycling versus incineration (Muthu et al., 2012c).

Energy conserved in kilowatt hours Energy generated in kilowatt hours
Fibre per ton per ton
Nylon 6 4889 611
Nyon 66 4889 611
Viscose Rayon 4889 611
Acrylic 4889 611
Polyester 7203 1761
Cotton 3531 611
Wool 16389 Data not available
Polypropylene 5776 1407
Low-density polyethylene 6330 1222
High-density polyethylene 6232 1761
polyethylene, cotton, wool, viscose rayon, and nylon 6 and nylon 66. The recyclability
potential index is the sum of the economic gain index and environmental gain index.
The economic gain is calculated by taking the ratio of the price of recycled and virgin
fibre, whereas the environmental gain is the sum of benefits gained from saving
potential resources, reduced environmental impact due to recycling, and avoiding
landfill or incineration (Muthu, 2014; Muthu et al., 2012b). Further, Muthu et al. (2012b)
developed a scaling template based on different scenarios to classify available values
in the five-point system to calculate the recyclability potential index. Based on the
scaling template, the lower the values of RPI, the better the recyclability. Polyester
and polypropylene are ranked first, whereas cotton is ranked fifth. The ranking of a
selection of textile fibres in terms of their recyclability is shown in Table 14.
The study reported by Muthu et al. (2012c) states that the CO2 equivalent of cotton
fabric produced from recycled waste and virgin fibres is 0.658 and 0.659 kg respectively.
They report that consumer behaviour, government policies, and product design consider-
ations are important in reducing carbon footprints. Esteve-Turrillas and de la Guardia (2017)
compared the environmental impact of garments produced from recovered cotton and
virgin cotton using the life cycle assessment technique. Their study shows that the pro-
duction of high-quality textiles from recovered cotton is environmentally friendly since it
reduces cotton production, ginning, and dyeing process. Song, Youn, and Gutowski (2009)
reported a life-cycle energy analysis of fibre-reinforced composites used in automobile
applications. The energy consumed in the use phase of an automobile is higher. They
concluded that pultruded composite parts in trucks or buses could save more energy than
steel. Further, Muthu et al. (2012c) reported that recycling is more beneficial than incin-
eration and Table 15 shows the environmental benefits of recycling as compared to
incineration.
8. Sustainability and textile waste upcycling

Textile waste upcycling is one of the ways to bring circularity to the textile supply
chain, and bring some added value to encourage incorporating corporate social
responsibility and ethical buying at the consumer level. Consumer awareness about
textile waste is fundamental to bring sustainability to the textile sector and the role
of government in bringing this about is vital in this regard. The consumer should be
aware of checking labels while buying textiles. Buying second-hand clothing can
greatly reduce textile waste and the corresponding environmental burden and con-
sumers have a significant role to play in enhancing sustainability in the textile supply
chain. The less people shop, the lower the waste will be (HEJ Support, n.d.), but this
is highly unlikely to be the complete answer. Further, research and development is
needed to develop both new sustainable textile production and waste management
alternatives. For example, the hemp fibre has a lower environmental footprint than
cotton and studies have reported the use of cotton/hemp blended yarns and their
fabrics for apparel purposes (Cierpucha, Kozłowski, Mańkowski, Waśko, & Mańkowski,
2004), but reusing and recycling of waste textiles can also be effective methods to
build sustainability into the textile sector (Fibre2Fashion, n.d.), especially when landfill
is still practised knowing the fact that it produces dangerous leachate and gaseous
emissions. It has been reported that the CO2eq emission per kilogram of virgin fibre
production is many times lower than from its landfill (Yasin & Sun, 2019), so the focus
of attention should be at least on reducing if not eliminating such disposal. The
sustainability of any textile upcycling technique should be both assessed and appre-
ciated in terms of its contribution to the environment and society. To understand the
textile upcycling sector’s current sustainability performance, it is necessary to under-
stand current sustainability performance, acceptable performance, and interventions
to reach it (Roos, Zamani, Sandin, Peters, & Svanström, 2016). To achieve environmental
sustainability and avoid and the non-linear collapse of the ecosystem, it is necessary
to care of the planetary boundaries such as climate change, the introduction of novel
entities, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, ocean acidification,
biochemical flows (divided into phosphorus and nitrogen flows), freshwater use,
land-system change, and biosphere integrity change.
9. Future scope and summary

It must be understood that textile waste management is an emerging global problem,
and every country has to play its role in solving it. Synthetic fibre production is
increasing, and given that the main raw material is petroleum, it will impose an
increasing load on petroleum production. Textile waste-based products are environ-
mentally friendly and economical and have tremendous potential to be used for
various applications. Ethical policies and economic strategies should be adopted which
should include waste textile recycling to help to keep the environment safe. The
textile business’s supply chain is complex and globally distributed, which means that
solutions demand every country’s attention. Many countries do not have sufficient
or accurate data about textile waste generation and this applies to both municipal
solid waste handling and the industries which generate it. It is necessary for all of
those involved to participate in developing a standard system to collect textile waste
management information and an associated plan for the reuse or recycling of the
highest possible proportion of the waste. Governments and other policy makers
should therefore:
i) encourage and fund research into improved textile waste management

ii) encourage and fund research into product development to utilise and add
value to waste materials and
iii) support business start-ups based on textile waste recycling.
Charitable organizations also have a significant role to perform in establishing the

circular textile economy, not only at the practical level in terms of used clothing
collection, its separation, reuse, and recycling at local and international levels, but
also in terms of generating publicity for upcycling and exerting pressure on policy
makers and government bodies to play a more-significant role in driving its estab-
lishment forward. In both the developed and in developing countries, the role of
charitable organizations can be of great value. Plenty of solutions are available for
textile waste recycling. Nothing should be considered to be waste until the point is
reached where it becomes impossible/uneconomic to reuse or recycle the items. It
is everyone’s duty to play their part and provide a safe environment for future gen-
erations so governments, businesses and industry must all be persuaded to play a
useful role in significantly improving the management of textile waste processing,
and prioritising reuse, recycling, and upcycling of textile-waste over disposal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Upcycling Textile Wastes Challenges and Innovations

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Textile Progress

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/ttpr20

Upcycling textile wastes: challenges and

Zunjarrao Kamble & Bijoya Kumar Behera

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00405167.2021.1986965

Published online: 10 Jan 2022.

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Upcycling textile wastes: challenges and innovations

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

CONTACT Bijoya Kumar Behera B.K.Behera@textile.iitd.ac.in

i. Source Reduction refers to reducing clothing accumulation by promoting cloth-

Whatever waste management method is applied it should be selected on the basis

2. Classification of textile wastes

Figure 1. Classification of textile wastes.

3. Need for textile waste reuse and recycle

Figure 2. World fibre production (%) in the year 2019.

3.2. Environmental footprints of textiles

3.3. Textile waste and human health

4. Challenges in textile waste recycling

4.2. Waste management

Table 4. Published methods of the separation of WBFs (Ling et al., 2019).

of polyester and other organic impurities using dimethyl sulfoxide treatment in a

4.2.3. Storage and disposal

requirement will also increase, and landfilling is not at all an environment-friendly

4.2.4. Supply chain for efficient textile waste management

5. Various ways of reuse and recycling textile waste

5.1. Primary recycling

5.2. Secondary recycling

5.3. Tertiary recycling

5.4. Quaternary recycling

Table 5. The systematization of recycling routes (Sandin & Peters, 2018).

Figure 4. Reuse or recycling routes for end-of-life textiles.

(homogeneous and inhomogeneous). The good as new and homogeneous textiles

5.5. Garment reusing

at elevated temperature. A similar approach based on polymer dissolution can be used

5.6. Fabric recycling

Figure 7. The GOONJ value chain (Nanath, 2011).

5.7. Fibre recycling

5.8. Polymer or oligomer recycling

5.9. Monomer recycling

5.10. Recycling of technical textiles

5.11. Composite recycling

6. Upcycling textile waste

6.1. Ethanol production

6.2. Glucose production

6.3. Nanocellulose production

6.4. Biogas production

6.5. Thermal and acoustic insulation materials

Avg./weighted α 0.75 0.6 0.35 0.55 0.063 0.079

Muniyasamy, Botha, and Anandjiwala (2015) developed nonwovens by using waste

6.6. Activated carbon production and carbon black

6.7. Dye absorbing materials

6.8. Fibre production

6.9. Yarns and fabrics production

6.10. Paper making

6.11. Clean solid fuel

6.12. Flexible strain sensor

6.13. Cellulose beads for drug delivery