The Tamesis
Before any clothing can be recycled, it must be taken apart. This process, known as disassembly, is quickly becoming a major sticking point in the race to expand textile-for-textile recycling.
“You can’t make a [recycled] Ellen Mensink, founder and CEO of Amsterdam-based circular textile manufacturer Brightfibre, said:
Now more than ever, the fashion industry and recyclers need to figure this out. Regulation is on the horizon through the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Directive as eco-design rules, the availability of recyclable materials and non-destructive disassembly become pressing issues for compliance.
“In the next few years, it will be crucial for designers to [disassembly] “Tools in the toolbox can make better products,” said Kristoffer Stokes, co-founder and CEO of D-Glue. D-Glue, a patented technology incubated by Geisys Ventures, a Boston-based plastics and textiles consulting firm, can be added to existing adhesives to make them debondable with heat.
Most clothing is not designed with how it will be disassembled at the end of its useful life; instead, designers and product developers focus more on style, fit, functionality, or durability. Elements such as tape for waterproofing seams, rivets for reinforcing pockets or embroidery for decoration make disassembly quite difficult. As a result, each company dealing with recycled clothing has to devise its own approach, meaning fashion is far from a clear circular path.
Same problem, different approach
The struggle to scale up dismantling is characterized by individual recyclers and producers increasing processing capacity to meet growing demand.
Luxury fabric manufacturer Manteco is located in the Prato region of Italy, a region known for its textile recycling. Locally, workers who sort clothes by color, quality and composition are called ” Senciaolo and are regarded as highly skilled craftsmen, able to differentiate between woolen yarns and worsted yarns simply by their look and feel. Manteco regularly shares footage of his cenciaioli sitting among piles of textiles, cutting up garments and tossing sections into color-coded baskets. According to the company’s latest sustainability report, more than 1.3 million kilograms of textiles will be processed in this way by 2023.
Giuseppe Picerno, head of innovation and sustainability, believes that automated procurement will eventually be possible through AI training, but at the moment the technology is not powerful enough to ensure that only high-quality inputs make it to the recycling stage. “Technology is not enough to ensure good quality, and the quality of the input material is one of the pillars of our success. We need experienced operators,” says Picerno.
