When clothes are too worn, damaged, or unsuitable for reuse, they often have nowhere to go but landfill.

A new partnership between Deakin University’s Recycling and Clean Energy Commercialisation Hub (REACH) and Salvos Stores is developing new ways to recycle unwanted textiles and create opportunities for Australian businesses to put recycled materials back into the textile supply chain.

Each Australian discards an average of 23 kilograms of clothing to landfill yearly, according to Australian Government figures – roughly the weight of a large, packed suitcase. With limited options for recycling clothing that can no longer be worn, or resold, valuable materials are lost from the textile supply chain.

Funded through the Australian Government’s Trailblazer Universities Program, the project combines Salvos Stores’ expertise in textile collection and recovery, with Deakin’s research and pilot-scale advanced manufacturing capabilities in circular textiles processing.

Deakin Institute for Frontier Materials Associate Professor Chris Hurren said the research was focused on maintaining the length and quality of recycled fibres so they could potentially be used to make new clothing, rather than being downgraded into lower-value products, such as insulation or seat wadding.

‘The biggest problem with recycling textiles is that you end up with a random mess of fibre types. With the Salvos technology, we’re able to get an individual fibre type, which means that we can then process that more efficiently and make better products from it,’ he said.

The project is helping optimise textile recovery at Salvos Stores’ new Textile Recovery Facility in Queensland, where technology sorts unwanted clothing by fibre type and colour and automatically removes buttons and zips to create a cleaner stream of material for recycling.

Salvos Stores Business Development Manager and textile scientist Meriel Chamberlin said quality donations are essential, and without them, there is a growing proportion of garments entering the organisation that are unsuitable for resale.

‘Those garments we collect still contain valuable textile materials, so the challenge is finding ways to recover them and turn them into new products.

‘Our technology allows whole garments to be processed into fabric pieces ready for recycling, without the need for manual decommissioning.

‘Better sorting processing and technology allow more garments to stay in circulation and on the shop floor,’ she said.

Deakin’s Future Fibres Facility provides the equipment to take recycled fibres through the textile manufacturing process and test what can be made from them – helping businesses explore their potential for new products and applications.

‘Australia’s textile manufacturing industry declined significantly in the 1990s following the removal of tariffs. Now, rising shipping costs, access to renewable energy, advances in automation and global supply chain disruptions have turned the tide and made onshore textile manufacturing attractive to business.

‘Industry doesn’t have the specialised equipment that we have in our laboratory here. For them to explore whether onshoring is viable, they need to first put a toe in the water,’ said Associate Professor Hurren.

The partnership will investigate different textile streams and potential end uses, with the aim of developing product demonstrations to help Australian manufacturers explore opportunities to incorporate recycled materials into their products and develop more circular production processes.

Ms Chamberlin said working at pilot scale was critical to developing new markets for recycled textiles.

‘The capability to play at scale is critical to develop new markets and prove concepts that are going to be worth scaling to solve the textile waste problem here in Australia

‘If we can tackle secure decommissioning of uniforms, that opens up new opportunities for the textile recycling industry,’ Ms Chamberlin said.

Associate Professor Hurren said finding ways to keep unwanted clothing in circulation was an important part of building a more sustainable textile industry in Australia.

‘Putting your clothing in for textile recycling, rather than putting them in the bin, you’re giving them another life. And this is an important thing for us to do.’

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