The Fibersort Machine With Infra Red Technology Is Capable Of Sorting 900 Kg Per Hour Of Post Consumer Textiles

Image Courtesy of Fibersort

The Mountain Of Used Textiles Keeps Growing

The accelerating consumption and disposal practices in fashion cause textiles entering the market to reach their end-of-use rapidly. In North-West Europe alone, around 4,700 kilo tons of post-consumer textile waste is generated every year.

On average, only 30% of these textiles are collected separately- the rest is lost within household waste.

In the best-case scenario, these textiles are sold in the second-hand market both locally and internationally.

The remaining textiles are considered non-rewearable textiles due to their unsuitability for the second-hand market or the market saturation that second-hand clothing is currently facing.

Almost all of these textiles are currently being downcycled, incinerated or landfilled.

Nevertheless, 24% of the textiles collected have the potential to be recycled into new textiles, but currently are not.

These textiles represent 486 kilo tons per year, the equivalent to the weight of 50 Eiffel towers!

Automated sorting technologies could enable the industry to turn non-rewearable textiles that currently have no other destination than downcycling, landfill or incineration into valuable feedstock for textile-to-textile recycling.

One of these technologies is the Fibersort, a Near Infrared (NIR) based technology able to categorize textiles in 42 different fractions based on their fiber composition, structure and color.

Over the past years, the technology has been optimized, tested and validated to prepare it for commercialization.

The Fibersort is now able to sort ~900 kgs of post-consumer textiles per hour.

Fibersorted Materials Have Been Validated By Project Partners And Are Ready For The Market

The success of the technology is highly dependent on the end-markets that help transform textile waste into new resources.

The Fibersort project partners Circle Economy, Valvan Baling Systems, Reshare, Procotex, Worn Again, and Smart Fibersorting have worked with industry stakeholders to better understand these end-markets, assess the potential of the sorted materials and validate the business case of automated sorting as a key enabler of textile-to-textile recycling.

Results from these activities are available through project publications and Fibersorted materials are now commercially available for other organisations to test their potential for textile-to-textile recycling.

Challenges Remain Ahead – What Can Be Done?

There are clear opportunities to successfully integrate automated sorting technologies and recycled post-consumer textiles across the value chain.

Over the past years, innovation has spurred across this sector of the industry. However, several challenges remain to ensure the long-term implementation of these technologies in relation to financial and technical feasibility as well as the opportunities to scale.

Collectors, sorters, recyclers, manufacturers, brands and policymakers have both opportunities and responsibilities to address these challenges.

Although the Interreg NWE Fibersort project reaches its ending date in March 2020, the partners in the Fibersort consortium expect to continue working towards this circular ambition, as well as encouraging others to join the journey.

An End To A Project, A Start To A New Journey

On the 12th of March, the Fibersort consortium demonstrated the technology to the industry and other relevant stakeholders during a webinar.

The webinar was organized as an alternative for the Interreg NWE project’s Final Symposium that was scheduled on the same day but that had to be cancelled due to the implications of corona virus.

During the webinar, the project partners shared current performance information about the updated machine and discussed their experiences with post-consumer textiles so far, as well as the challenges that remain ahead in the spaces of collection, sorting, chemical and mechanical recycling.

The Fibersort Project Is Funded By Interreg NWE

Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) is a European Territorial Cooperation Program funded by the European Commission with the ambition to make the North-West Europe area a key economic player and an attractive place to work and live, with high levels of innovation, sustainability and cohesion.