World fibre production has been rising continuously over last decades and a tremendous increase is expected in the near future. The major portion of fibres goes to the textile industry whose main output streams are apparel and home textiles. With the transformation of these textile products from a basic human need to fashion items, their lifetime before disposal is steadily declining, while at the same time the complexity of their material composition is increasing. As a matter of fact, the amount of disposed items is increasing distinctively and the issue of a proper handling of end-of-life textiles is becoming more important. The objective of this mini review is, first to give a brief overview of the already available textile recycling methods, and subsequently it will discuss innovative developments of new recycling processes in the textile recycling sector. A special focus of this review lies on the emerging field of biochemical fibre recycling processes, which could become a major step on the way to a circular economy in the textile processing chain. Owing to the high selectivity of bio-catalysts, enzymes, these processes could be used to remove a specific fibre material from multi-component textiles. As the complexity of textiles is reduced, the recyclability is increased.

Recently, textiles and their end-of-life management have become the focus of public and political attention. In the European Union the revised waste framework directive defines textiles as municipal waste and stipulates their separate collection by 2025. In the context of these developments, this paper summarises briefly the current state-of-the-art in textile recycling. It is evident that recycling methods are not yet fully developed. This is especially the case with multi-material textiles, which are composed of two or more polymers that are incompatible for recycling. In the practical part of the communication, results are presented which show that enzymatic hydrolysis is a suitable process for recycling textiles made of cotton and polyester. After a complete removal of cotton, the remaining pure polyester fibres undergo a re-granulation and post-condensation step. The so obtained recycled polyester is fed back into the textile processing chain and finally towels are obtained. The main steering parameters of the enzymatic hydrolysis process are described. The study proves that solutions in accordance with the Circular Economy in the textile sector are available but an industrial implementation has not yet been realised.

Achieving a circular economy for end-of-life textiles is one of the big challenges in the textile industry. Currently, after disposal, textiles often end up in landfills or in incineration plants. Over the last years, the textile industry exhibited high growth rates and the annual global fibre production is reaching 100 Million t. It also has to be considered that textile products are increasingly becoming more complex, to fulfill special functionality resulting in the use of multi-material textiles. However, these textiles are hard to recycle. The TEX2MAT project is a FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency) promoted project conducted by a consortium of 13 research institutions and private businesses that offers a solution. The goal was to develop an innovative process for the material recycling of selected multi-material textile streams. In multiple case studies, pre- and post-consumer cotton/polyester textiles from the Austrian SME sector were investigated to close the material cycle from raw material back to raw material. The case studies used a new approach involving the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose. This way cotton can be converted into glucose and polyester remains as the only polymer and is thus accessible for a rather easy recycling process. The obtained glucose can be used as raw material for different platform chemicals. The project team successfully demonstrated the functionality of the whole processing chain, by complete removal of the cotton from the textile, and weaving of new towels with the recycled polyester.

Dealing with the pollution of plastics into the environment is considered one of the major challenges of the current century. Especially microplastic pollutions are considered a significant threat to human life, especially since once these plastic particles make their way into the environment, removing them is almost impossible. Unfortunately, when researches look for microplastics in the environment, synthetic fibres are too often disregarded. This is a mistake considering that a big part of human clothing consists purely of synthetic fibres, meaning they are omnipresent in every part of human activity and so are their emissions. This work takes a critical look at the state of the art analysis methods for microplastics in soil, water and air, with a special focus on their ability (or inability) to detect fibrous materials. A case study in the form of a critical evaluation was made to highlight common problems when detecting microplastic fibres, it focused primarily on the sampling of large water volumes. Another case study explores the difficulties of microscopy in the analysis of microplastics. Furthermore, the sources of fibre pollution and which pathways they take in the environment before the end up in the maritime system are explored. Finally, this work makes a call for the creation and enforcement of standardized methods, which would potentially solve many of the current problems.

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