Each day, approximately 4 million tons of pre-consumer and post-consumer textile waste are discarded. Post-consumer cast-offs are typically collected by clothing drives and charity drop-boxes. They are sorted and graded with the best ones being resold to other emerging nations while the usable rest are cut up into rags. Pre-consumer leftovers are what is most commonly used for recycled fiber apparel.
The availability and predictability of pre-consumer waste makes for a more consistent supply making them a better candidate for recycling. The pre-consumer scraps that are not suitable for clothing are often turned into upholstery padding, rags, mops and other industrial grade products.
A few enterprising companies use the pre-consumer leftovers to make clothing. To do this, they collect the scraps, and separate them by color. The fibers are then shredded to break them down into something called shoddy. Polyester fibers (often made of recycled PET Plastic) are added for additional strength because the the recycled cotton fibers are a little shorter than the original fibers.
The fibers are then re spun back into yarn. The yarn is then used to make new clothing using traditional sewing and manufacturing. These recycled fiber garments typically have little or no dye or chemicals used in their production.
Two of the companies that stand out for me are Playback and Anvil Knitwear. Playback's product lines consist of only garments that contain recycled fibers. Anvil produces many lines that include traditional, organic and recycled options.
Our retail site, RecycledFiberApparel.com carries products from both of these green companies.
While writing this, I found these other interesting facts:
- Cotton production accounts for 25% of the pesticide used in the world
- To create just one cotton t-shirt, it takes, on average, 3 pounds of chemical fertilizers and 500 gallons of water
- Up to 40% of cotton grown is wasted between the harvest and the manufacture of garments
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