Enzymatic textile recycling – best practices and outlook

Abstract

Recently, textiles and their end-of-life management have become the focus of public and political attention. In the European Union the revised waste framework directive defines textiles as municipal waste and stipulates their separate collection by 2025. In the context of these developments, this paper summarises briefly the current state-of-the-art in textile recycling. It is evident that recycling methods are not yet fully developed. This is especially the case with multi-material textiles, which are composed of two or more polymers that are incompatible for recycling. In the practical part of the communication, results are presented which show that enzymatic hydrolysis is a suitable process for recycling textiles made of cotton and polyester. After a complete removal of cotton, the remaining pure polyester fibres undergo a re-granulation and post-condensation step. The so obtained recycled polyester is fed back into the textile processing chain and finally towels are obtained. The main steering parameters of the enzymatic hydrolysis process are described. The study proves that solutions in accordance with the Circular Economy in the textile sector are available but an industrial implementation has not yet been realised.