PREPARATION OF TEXTILE WASTE TO RECYCLING: ANALYSIS AND REMOVAL OF TEXTILE FINISHING TREATMENTS

The EU generates 12.6 million tonnes of textile waste each year. Clothing and footwear alone account for 5.2 million tonnes of waste, yet only 22% of post-consumer textile waste is currently collected separately for re-use or recycling. In recent years, several solutions have been developed to recycle textile waste, including optimising recycling by separating blends, but little is known about the influence of finishing treatments on different types of recycling processes. For these reasons, this work has dealt with the analysis and removal of different finishing treatments (silicone finish, water repellent, optical brightener) applied to different fibres in blends (polyester, cotton and modacrylic) to prepare textile waste for mechanical recycling. Different analytical methods were tested to detect the treatments (to aid sorting) and different methods for their removal were evaluated. The results of this research may also be useful for other types of recycling (e.g. thermo-mechanical, chemical).