When you start to deal with the topic of textile recycling you are guaranteed to read about the topic of garment-to-garment recycling sooner or later.
But what does this even mean?
It´s pretty simple:
Garment-to-garment recycling, also known as textile-to-textile recycling, is a process of repurposing used clothing or fabric scraps into new garments. This sustainable fashion practice is gaining popularity as people become more aware of the environmental impact of fast fashion and the waste generated by the textile industry.
How does garment-to-garment recycling work?
In traditional textile recycling, fabrics are typically broken down into fibers and then repurposed into non-clothing items such as cleaning cloths or insulation. However, garment-to-garment recycling involves taking intact garments or fabric scraps and turning them into new clothing items, thus extending the life of the materials.
Seems like garment-to-garment recycling is the way to go... right?
Unfortunately it´s not that easy, especially when it comes to garments which are decorated with heat transfers or other additionals.
A complete recycling process works best if there´s only one type of polymer included in the process, which means that for example in the process of recycling nylon, ideally, only fabrics and additionals made out of nylon should be used, or if you want to recycle polyester garments or jerseys, only polyester polymers should be put inside the recycling process, all others will cause a contamination of the main polymer component.
Most of the time, to decorate garments, PU, TPU etc. heat transfers or additionals are used which then need to be cut out of the garment in a manual process to split the different materials to be able to recycle the textile.
OUR SOLUTION
To overcome this tricky problem we came up with a solution to avoid the mentioned manual process and the additional work caused by it: We developed our 3R - ECOPOLY heat transfer technique, which consists of 100% polyester and therefore can be added to the recycling process together with a polyester garment or jersey.
3R - ECOPOLY is part of our 3R (Reuse | Reduce | Recycle) product line which is our commitment towards offering more sustainable and eco-friendly heat transfer solutions.
CONCLUSION
Theres no doubt that garment-to-garment recycling will be a defining element of the modern textile industry in the years to come. 3R - ECOPOLY is our approach at supporting this process by further minimizing the effort it takes to create a fully sustainable life cycle for your garment.
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