In November I gave a Masterclass in Scotland for the Zero Waste Scotland program. Therefore I made a scheme that shows different routes of materials. I would like to share this with you. I defined three steps in the material loop: resource, biodegradability and recyclability.
Resource The resource of a material can be renewable or non-renewable. Renewables are materials that regrow quick enough after harvesting to replace the old material. A renewable material is linen or a plastic made from plant sugars. A non-renewable material is crude oil. However with renewable materials you still have to consider the time to grow. Wood is a renewable material, but if we harvest too much wood in a short period of time the trees can not regrow quick enough.
Biodegradable There are fibres that come directly from nature which are biodegradable like linen. Depending on how you treat them with dyes and finishes they stay biodegradable or become non-biodegradable. There are also man-made fibres that are biodegradable like fibres made in the lyocell process such as Tencel. There are also man-made fibres that are non-biodegradable, for example regular PET.
Recyclable All fibres are recyclable. However in some ways the fibre quality gets lower and in the end you still create waste. For example with mechanically recycling the fabrics are shredded: the fibres get shorter. You can make new yarn out of these fibres, but after multiple times of shredding the fibres becomes too short to make new yarn out of it. The good thing about mechanically recycling is that it costs less energy. Here you see a short movie about mechanical recycling of fibres.
With chemical recycling the fibre is transformed into sludge and this is used to make new yarn. This process can be done with synthetic fibres such as polyesters, but is also possible with cotton as the SaXcell project shows. With this process you get a high quality yarn again. However it costs more energy. Here you see a short movie of chemically recycling of fibres.
In the following pictures I show you different material routes and their examples.
Biodegradable There are fibres that come directly from nature which are biodegradable like linen. Depending on how you treat them with dyes and finishes they stay biodegradable or become non-biodegradable. There are also man-made fibres that are biodegradable like fibres made in the lyocell process such as Tencel. There are also man-made fibres that are non-biodegradable, for example regular PET.
Recyclable All fibres are recyclable. However in some ways the fibre quality gets lower and in the end you still create waste. For example with mechanically recycling the fabrics are shredded: the fibres get shorter. You can make new yarn out of these fibres, but after multiple times of shredding the fibres becomes too short to make new yarn out of it. The good thing about mechanically recycling is that it costs less energy. Here you see a short movie about mechanical recycling of fibres.
With chemical recycling the fibre is transformed into sludge and this is used to make new yarn. This process can be done with synthetic fibres such as polyesters, but is also possible with cotton as the SaXcell project shows. With this process you get a high quality yarn again. However it costs more energy. Here you see a short movie of chemically recycling of fibres.
In the following pictures I show you different material routes and their examples.
 | bamboo, the resource is renewable, but there are different processes to make bamboo into a yarn. Fibre > rough sustainable fabric. Bamboo sludge viscose process > soft not sustainable fabric. Bamboo sludge lyocell process > soft sustainable fabric. |
 | Greenfil This material is made of Rilsan, which is made of castor oil. It acts like Nylon but is made of a renewable resource. |
 | Sorona This is a polyester of which a part of the molecules are made of renewable resources (plant sugars) 37% of the total weight of the yarn. A part is still made from crude oil. It can be recycled in the normal polyester waste stream. The yarn named Biophyl is made of Sorona. |
 | This fibre is made from PET, a conventional polyester but it apparently decomposes in as little as 45 days, albeit in rigidly controlled conditions (high temperature, humidity and pH)[1] |
My favourite route
- For both biodegradable and recyclable materials it is important to design a suitable infrastructure to collect and process the fibres.
- With all these different material routes it is important to give better information and labelling of the products that consist these fibres. This makes it easier to process the fibres after use.
[1] Kate Fletcher & Lynda Grose, Fashion & Sustainability design for change, 2011, page 18
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