Will Waste Plastics Be The Best Raw Material For Textiles In The Future?

As the public's awareness of environmental protection has been widely promoted, people have begun to pay attention to the environmental problems caused by the large use of plastics. With the rise of fast fashion, the life span of clothes is becoming shorter and shorter, which also brings heavy burden to the earth.

In recent years, waste plastics recycling technology has made a breakthrough, in addition to recycling plastic products, but also can generate yarn. Waste plastics and clothes can even be recycled together to make fiber plastic board.

International brands are beginning to enter, Sustainable development of environmental protection and regeneration

Photo source: Dafeng environmental protection

Decathlon, a French sports chain, has been faced with the problem that a large number of plastic clothes hangers have been discarded. In order to save manpower and time in the shop, Decathlon will hang the clothes on the hanger directly in the garment factory. Generally speaking, the clothes hangers left after the goods are sold are transported back to the factory for reuse. However, due to the fact that there are only stores in some areas and there are no factories, only tons of clothes hangers per year can be reduced to waste products.

Decathlon attaches great importance to environmental sustainability. The brand hopes that the waste disposal is not only recycling and incineration, but also can be recycled. So recently found Dafeng environmental protection company to help recycling.

In order to ensure the quality and durability of recycled materials, the types of recycled plastics should be single enough. However, Decathlon uses three or four kinds of hangers, which are composed of different plastic materials or mixed with other additives. Therefore, how to classify and reuse them has become the biggest difficulty.

Xu Chengyu, R & D Manager of the recycling Department of Dafeng environmental protection company, explained that the basic skill of circular economy is that the quality of recycled plastic materials must meet the requirements of the industry. Although it sounds simple, every procedure is necessary from cleaning, crushing process, personnel classification training to recycled material certification.

After Dafeng environmental protection assisted decathlon to establish a classification mechanism, it successfully made waste clothes hangers into shopping bags, and these shopping bags can be returned to the recycling system if they are no longer used in the future.

Photo source: Dafeng environmental protection

Three years ago, a team of more than 150 materials scientists and engineers began to look for "sustainable, environmentally friendly building blocks" solutions for LEGO. The biggest challenge for Lego's sustainability journey is to find new materials that are as durable as existing building blocks and match the LEGO elements that have been built over the past 60 years.

Over the past three years, they have tested more than 250 PET materials and hundreds of plastics, but none of them meets Lego's stringent quality and safety requirements. Some people have doubts about the safety of these blocks, but in fact, Lego has strict control over product safety.

For those blocks made of recycled plastics, researchers combine recycled PET with "strengthening additives" through special composite technology to make them have enough hardness and high durability. On average, one liter PET bottle can make ten Lego blocks of 2 * 4 specifications.

At present, this special building block has not yet been sold on the market. It will take some time for the researchers to test and upgrade the material formula, and then evaluate whether it can enter the trial production stage. At present, it will take at least a year.