Newsroom
TEXAID and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts research better ways of recycling collected clothing
Over one third of the collected old clothes can be reused as cleaning cloths or reprocessed wool, at best. TEXAID and researchers at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts now want to close the textile cycle further. The ‘Texcycle’ project has shown: Used textiles can be used to produce yarn and fleece for new carpets and insulating materials.
Each year, TEXAID collects around 37,000 tons of old clothes in Switzerland and ensures that these are reused in an ecologically useful manner. 30 percent of the textiles collected are in too poor a condition to be worn again as second-hand clothing – the tendency is increasing, as the trend of cheap clothing produced cheaply persists. The question in the ‘Texcycle’ project was: Can these textiles be recycled for high-quality uses? Researchers at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and TEXAID developed methods to spin the old clothing in Switzerland into a coarse yarn which is suitable for making carpets. Design and material researchers created prototypes from the short fibres and even from the dust which arises when fabrics are torn. These prototypes could be used for noise insulation, for example.
