Are clothes recyclable or garbage?

Clothes can be recycled

What can we do to reduce the impact of our urge to buy clothes? “Always throw our old clothes in special containers for recycling textile waste, regardless of the entity they belong to,” answers Pedro Andrés, president of the Iberian Association of Textile Recycling (Asirtex). Even socks with holes in them. The problem with this growing waste is that “once we throw it in the conventional garbage garbage can, it is irrecoverable,” laments Andrés.

Textiles represent between 5% and 6% of municipal waste, ranking as the fifth fraction and with a high percentage of use. The potential of this waste, which is currently so underutilized, is enormous.

“Most of the garments that end up in a textile sorting container are exported for sale in countries where second-hand clothes are bought, but there are fewer and fewer of them,” laments the president of Asirtex, “Only 1% goes to social benefits,” he says, a reality that is far from popular thinking.

Used clothing recycling project pdf

Textile recycling is the method of reusing or reprocessing used clothing, fibrous material and leftover clothing from the manufacturing process. Textiles in municipal solid waste are found primarily in discarded clothing, although other sources include furniture, carpets, tires, footwear, and non-durable goods such as sheets and towels.

Trapillo (also called cattail) is a recycled material from surplus textiles from the garment industry, which comes in cotton tape bobbins about 3/4 cm wide for weaving wool.[1] It is also known as “rag” (also called cattail).

Used clothing recycling in chile 2020

The selection you make of your household garbage is sometimes complicated to organize, because there are many exceptions, and there are materials that seem innocuous or recyclable that, however, should not be disposed of in the same bin as other things.

Thus, not all plastics are recyclable in the yellow garbage can, and not all “glass” is glass. Therefore, when it comes to disposing of what we want to throw away, sometimes we must think twice and ask ourselves if the four containers that we usually have at our disposal are enough, or if we have to resort to a clean point.

The problem is usually the little time we have, both to make a careful selection of our products, and to inform ourselves about what to do with them; and much more to find a clean point and approach it to dispose of the waste that does not fit in the common containers.

When you want to get rid of clothes you no longer use, it is always a better option to opt for a specific container to donate these garments to people who may need them. Think that not only its fabric can have value, but also the whole energetic and labor process that has culminated in the making of your clothes.

Clothing recycling companies

When it comes to buying clothes, the traditional market has tried to inculcate in us the formula of use and throw away. That is to say, we often get rid of the clothes that we bought not so long ago and, almost immediately, we go to the stores and shopping malls with the aim of replacing them with others.

However, the vast majority of people are unaware of the many benefits of giving a second chance to those garments that are kept in good condition. Have you ever thought about it before? In this post we want to talk to you about how to recycle clothes, giving you some ideas that you will surely like. Keep reading: a world of possibilities will open up for you!

Almost all the clothes we wear are made from four materials: cotton, wool, silk or synthetic fibers. The first three are obtained naturally, and the fourth is a petroleum derivative.  Regardless of the origin of the material, the manufacture of clothing is a process that involves practices that can harm the environment, for example, the production of dyes, coatings, bleaching and mercerization.