TexMix - Recycling cellulose from mixtures of waste textiles
Waste textiles are becoming an increasing environmental problem due to their growing volumes and lack of alternatives to handle the waste sustainably. One of the main barriers to improve waste textile handling are the limitations in recycling technologies, which typically can only recycle a particular fiber type.
This means that current recyclers select certain materials while the rest of waste textiles remain unaddressed. This selectivity creates many obstacles for a well-functioning recycling system such as economic risks to textile collectors and sorters or the impossibility to recycle blended fibers, which are dominant in many market segments such as apparel.
This project intends to test a bold idea to address this barrier: recycle different types of waste textiles in the same process. The idea consists in developing a technology that is capable to extract cellulose both from monomaterials (cotton, lyocell, viscose, etc.) and blended fibers (polycotton, cotton/elastane, etc.) so that textile products with different compositions can be recycled together.
The extracted cellulose would be a source of recycled feedstock for textile manufacturing, so that the materials can be used again in the same value chain. This solution would decrease the need for textile sorting, create the possibilty to recycle blended fibers and streamline the business models of both textile sorting and recycling so they can be viable at scale.
