Sodra has made a technological breakthrough in recycling large quantities of second-hand cotton and other blended fabrics to re-make new clothing and textiles.
Sodra, Sweden’s largest forest owners association, has developed a new method for extracting cotton and polyester from cotton and polyester blended fabrics. Advantages that facilitate large-scale fiber recycling from self-blend fabrics.
One of the main barriers to textile recycling is that fabrics are often made from a blend of materials. Sodra points out that no one in the world can currently recycle blended fabrics on a large scale. of fiber.
Sodra, which has about 52,000 forest owner members in southern Sweden, has been developing and investing in methods that blend cellulose fibers from wood with large amounts of waste textiles. Industrial process. The report states that the result of its research and development is to create “a completely new raw material and prepare to re-enter the textile industry.”
Sodra’s new technology can separate cotton and polyester blended fabrics into pure cotton and virgin polyester materials, which is one of the most widely used textiles on the market. . The pure cotton fiber is then added to Sodra’s wood pulp for textile purposes, allowing it to be used in the production of new textiles.
Johannes Bogren, President of SodraCellBioproducts, said: We are now remaking the roadmap for the fashion and textile industries by providing a recycling process for textile fibers. A sweater can now become a sweater again. This will create added value for our customers and especially for the fashion industry. This is an important day for us, and it is also an important moment for the emerging circular bioeconomy.
In the autumn Sodra’s pulp mill in Mörrum started producing wood pulp after adding 20 tons of second-hand textiles. Sodra currently only accepts white textiles, but the aim was also to find a solution for decolorization.
It also plans to promote a study on the possibility of extracting a set of residual products from polyester fibers, using Viscose and Two Lyocell products are being tested.
Swedish laundry and textile service provider Berendsen provides test materials used in the pilot program, including discarded bed sheets, towels, tablecloths, bathrobes and other products from hospitals and restaurants .
Looking to the future, Sodra said that production this year is expected to start with a “low volume” of 30 tons, and the long-term goal is to increase the textile pulp production by 25,000 tons to match the company.
