Professor Veena Sahajwalla and her colleagues at the University of New South Wales in Australia have proposed a method to convert textile waste into building panels, with the related paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. The research turns textile waste such as cotton, wool, polyester, and nylon into fiber-reinforced composite materials through crushing, bonding, and high-temperature compression, which can be used for indoor finishes such as floor tiles, wall panels, or ceilings.

Key Points

  • The global textile industry accounts for 10% of total global carbon emissions, making it the second-largest polluting industry, with a low recycling rate.
  • Apart from one coupling agent, the new method requires no other chemical pretreatment or coating, is low in energy consumption, and is non-toxic.
  • The resulting panels are moisture-resistant, sturdy enough to bear loads, and flame-retardant due to the addition of fine wood chips.

Taking China as an example, every year adds tens of millions of tons of discarded or idle textiles awaiting disposal, but the recycling rate is less than 15%. The fast-fashion trend accelerates clothing turnover, while globally there are very few companies that recycle old clothes, and large amounts of old clothes, even donated ones, ultimately end up in landfills or incinerators.

To address this, Sahajwalla's team collects textiles from textile industry waste, first removes zippers and buttons, then crushes cotton, wool, polyester, nylon, and other fabrics together into fibers, adds chemicals to bond the different fibers, and finally compresses them at high temperature into solid panels.

This fiber-reinforced composite material combines the properties of its raw materials: cotton fibers have good moisture absorption and can increase toughness and elasticity by 5% when wet; wool has excellent elasticity; polyester fibers are hydrophobic and high in strength; nylon fibers are tough and elastic. As a result, the panels are moisture-resistant, comparable in strength to wood particleboard, and can be used for load-bearing; they are flame-retardant due to the added fine wood chips. Materials with different compositions also have their own textures and colors like wood, ceramic, or stone, and can be used for indoor finishes such as floor tiles, wall panels, or ceilings.

The paper states that such panels "constitute a non-toxic, low-cost, low-carbon building material," and the researchers are working to scale up production. If this material can be put into application as soon as possible, it is expected to alleviate the resource waste and environmental pollution caused by waste textiles.

Source: What can you do with old clothes instead of throwing them away? Keep them to make flooring—sturdy, moisture-resistant, and fireproof! | Guokr Science · Originally published on 2014-05-23