Research: Tackling Mixed Textile Waste

Research summary

• Project timescale: 2022 - 2023.

Post-consumer textile waste disposed of in bins comprises both natural and synthetic materials. Additionally, many textile offcuts and rejects generated through manufacturing processes are made from blended materials, such as polycotton.

Recycling textiles presents a significant challenge, as the recycled product quality is rarely high enough to be able to recover the costs involved in processing the materials. This makes establishing a financially viable circular business model for textiles difficult.

The potential for achieving higher quality recycled materials derived from these wastes is limited when using traditional methods. 

Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University have been awarded funding by the Royal Society, to engineer innovative solutions enabling new products to be generated from these problematic waste streams.

• Determination of the role of dyes in the hydrolysis of textile fibres, helping to optimise textile waste recycling solutions and improve the quality of outputs so that they may be used in high-specification, secondary applications
• Development of new recycling technology, combining biological and chemical processes to convert textile fibres into useful products
• Successful upscaling of the recycling technology into a pilot-scale plant with the capacity to process high volumes of textile waste
• Production and testing of recycled plastic prototypes made from textile waste using the recycling technology