Technical design for recycling of clothing

Circular Economy — Challenges for the Textile and Clothing Industry

“…The volume of clothing purchases increased from 1996 by 40% [8]. Additionally, today clothes are made to be used for a comparatively short time and then disposed of, as the ubiquitous linear models of consumption dictate [12].…”

“…Some estimates indicate that such garments are likely to be discarded after just seven or eight wears [26,23,10]. Another negative consequence of these consumption patterns is that the opportunities for reuse of low-value clothing at the end of its useful life are few, if it quickly goes out of fashion, or has poor appearance retention, dimensional stability, or durability [12].…”

“…The problem that waste poses today lies not only in the number of its streams, but also how it is treated. The typical end-of-life options for textile and clothing products are the following [12,5] Only 20% of clothing waste is collected globally for reuse or recycling. The remaining 80% is landfilled or incinerated, which results in a great loss of energy and raw materials.…”

“…In the circular economy, product performance (determined by its durability, recyclability and reparability) will be defined as early as the design stage. Decisions being made then will influence all the subsequent phases of a garment's life-cycle (from the specification of raw materials and the selection of dyes, solvents, finishing processes, garment construction, accessories, and labelling methods to the disposal of the garment by the consumer), thus determining the range of endof-life options [12,10,29]. They will also make garments last longer and be less likely to end up in landfills at the end of life [12].…”

Strategic guidance based on the concept of cleaner production to improve the ship recycling industry

“…It has been successfully reviewed by several researchers for applying on various Environ Syst Decis products, but very few have explored the possibility of applying it on ships. For example, Ferrão and Amaral (2006), Soo et al (2015), Tian and Chen (2014) and van Schaik and Reuter (2004) discussed its applicability on automobiles, Durham et al (2015) discussed its applicability on clothing, Kuo (2010) examined its usability to improve the recyclability of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), whereas Perry et al (2012) applied the concept to composites. The studies discussing the concept in the context of ship recycling include Alkaner et al (2006), McKenna et al (2012) and Sivaprasad and Nandakumar (2013) before being discussed and applied on a case ship by the authors of this paper in Jain et al (2015Jain et al ( , 2016a.…”