With growing concern over the wrongful and improper disposal of clothing waste, you may want to take up recycling your old clothes as opposed to simply throwing them in the trash. But as much as you mean well, you might be surprised to know that not all clothes and fabrics can be always recycled.
1. Blended Fabrics
While most fabrics, be it natural or synthetic can be recycled, those that are made out of a blend or have a unique composition are next to impossible to recycle. Textiles or clothes can be recycled in two ways: ‘mechanical’, where the textile is shredded and then used for things like mattress stuffing or ‘chemical’, where the fabric is dissolved using chemicals to make new yarn to be woven into fresh fabrics. While fabric blends could be great candidates for chemical recycling, it’s not a process very widely used by industry recyclers. When it comes to mechanical recycling, fabric blends can be recycled with the process, however, this gives them limited opportunities to be used as fabrics or clothing again, defeating the actual concept of circular ‘fashion’.
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2. Wet Or Unclean Clothes
Always make sure the clothes you offer up for recycling are dry and recently cleaned. This is because wet, mouldy or unclean fabrics can end up damaging other fabrics in the textile recycling bunch it’s a part of. Not to mention the possibility of bacteria that can end up transferring to other fabrics and causing more damage and waste.
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3. Anything With Fixtures
Recycling is not just all mechanical, it’s also very labour intensive as it involves the separating of fixtures like buttons, zips and closures that cannot be a part of the recycling process. A lot of times recyclers do not end up accepting clothing with fixtures, causing these to end up at landfills even if the fabric of the garment is perfectly fine for recycling. Try to remove your garment fixtures before sending them for recycling. This will ensure the garment is not rejected and you can end up using fixtures for other clothes when needed.
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4. Embellished Clothes
Much like fixtures, fabric that is embellished will include sequins, metallic or plastic beads etc. that cannot be recycled with the fabric. In this scenario, these garments are again rejected and don’t end up being recycled. That said, these garments are better candidates for a great recycling project as you can use embellished parts as patches to give an old garment a makeover.
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5. Recycled Polyester
The clothing industry is booming with the advent of recycled polyester clothing. But you might notice how most of this recycled polyester is actually derived from PET bottles of other discarded post-consumer products rather than polyester fabrics. This is because there is only a limited number of times polyester fibres can be recycled whilst still retaining their quality. If you’re done with a garment made of recycled polyester, you may want to consider using them as cleaning cloths or simply donating them to communities in need.
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If any of the above clothes you have are in near-decent condition, you can also consider upcycling or donating the same. This will ensure these clothes don’t end up in landfills and lead to more pollution.