About 82,000 tonnes of clothing was recycled last year, the Ministry of Environment’s Resource Circulation Administration said yesterday, urging the purchase of mono-material garments by both the public and private sectors.
Agency official Wu Hsiao-ting (吳筱婷) said many clothes are made of a mixture of different fibers, which are difficult to sort and spin into new yarn for upcycling.
The high costs of producing recycled textile materials has pushed up the prices of upcycled garments, leading to the lack of a consumer market, she said.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
Although the government is seeking to promote sustainable textile-to-textile recycling by holding manufacturers accountable for producing clothes that are more recyclable, such awareness remains to be developed in the industry, Wu said.
Therefore, the ministry is focusing on promoting circular procurement, with the goal of encouraging production of recyclable textiles at the supply end through increasing the demand from consumers, she said.
Guidelines for circular procurement of textiles promulgated by the ministry last year suggest that mono-material designs for textiles be incorporated into procurement contracts, Wu said, adding that upstream suppliers would be willing to recycle such textiles.
The ministry is next to promote the extension of mono-material designs to accessories such as seams or buttons, especially as techniques have been developed to achieve this, she said.
Eleven private companies and 12 government agencies have purchased about 50,000 pieces of clothing made of mono-material polyester, agency data showed.
That amount of mono-material garments is expected to reduce about 17,000kg of waste clothes and 210,000 carbon emissions if all of them are recycled and repurposed, the agency said.
Wu said buyers can visit the Web sites of the agency or Taiwan Eco-Textiles to find textile suppliers that participate in circular procurement.
A representative from Shinkong Textile Co Ltd said that the company has launched a project dedicated to developing mono-material designs in uniform manufacturing for corporate clients.
The recycled uniforms would be made into a masterbatch, which can be reused not only in fabrics, but also in fillers for vehicles or stuffed dolls, he said.
As the masterbatch is made entirely of mono-materials, these repurposed products can all be recycled again for circular reuse, he added.
An ISO14067 verification conducted by the British Standards Institution showed that such a recycling process can reduce 58 percent of the carbon footprint, or about 1.96kg of carbon emissions, per garment, he said.
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