TCC Seminar Series – Current and future technologies in textile recycling

What happens to your clothes when you put them in the recycling bin? The sad answer is that only a small fraction of them go for reuse or recycling. Because of a lack of practical ways to recycle end-of-life textiles and garments, about 700,000 tonnes end up in landfill and incineration every year in the UK. So what are the big problems for recycling and are there any possible ways around these?

This seminar will present current and future technologies used in textile recycling. Currently, only 1% of textile discarded at the end-of-life are used to make new clothes. This is a waste of resources and impacts negatively on the environment. Dr Alexandra Lanot will discuss the current problems with recycling along with some promising new developments in the industry. She will then present a totally new approach being developed at the University of York, and explain how our Circular Cellulose approach could revolutionise textile recycling by circumventing the barriers currently holding back the sector, and allow end-of-life garments to be transformed into virgin-quality textiles for the fashion sector.

The Textiles Circularity Centre presents its events programme of seminars, open labs and research in progress events which invite audiences to explore a vision of a future circular textiles economy for the UK SME apparel-fashion industry based on producing high value textiles from bio waste resource flow.

The Seminar Series launched on 27 October 2021 as part of the Textiles Circularity Centre’s programme of events running from October 2021 to the end of 2024. Events are open to all and free to attend.

The fourth session will focus on Materials Circularity and will be led by Dr Alexandra Lanot from the University of York.