A building block of the sustainability transition of the textile and garment sector is recycling of post-consumer textiles. It promises to reduce the amount of textile waste deposed at landfills and incinerated as thermal recycling. It can close loops within the apparel industry and reduce the amount of land and water usage for the production of virgin fibers for new textiles and garments. Despite the advantages of textile recycling, currently only a small percentage of post-consumer textile waste is recycled worldwide. 

While manual sorting of textile waste is still common, digitalization and automation in textile sorting with tools such as NIR hold the potential to make recycling more cost efficient. Furthermore, it may improve sorting by identifying more reliable contamination, that distort recycling processes.

• Tanita Behrendt (Projektleitung)
• Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Eppinger (Projektleitung)

• Post-consumer textile recycling in the European Union: Policies to increase recycling and status quo of different recycling methods
  
  Konferenzbeitrag › Konferenzpaper › 2024
• Contamination Threshold Values for Textile Recycling
  
  Sammelbandbeitrag › Kapitel › 2024
• Closing Loops within the Textile Industry - Contaminant Threshold Values in Textile Recycling
  
  Konferenzbeitrag › Poster › 2023
• Recycling Methods for Postconsumer Textiles
  
  Konferenzbeitrag › Poster › 2023
• Digitalisation in the sorting process for garment recycling
  
  Konferenzbeitrag › Konferenzpaper › 2023