News Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Clothing research

Lasting, durability and lifespan: Looking closer at the terms

tobiasson on 25. October 2023

Panel discussion on stage at Lasting's end seminar.

“Let’s see the forest for the trees” was one of the talk-titles during the end seminar for the Lasting project, offered by PhD student Kamila Krych at NTNU. Hitting the nail on the head, she pointed to that fast fashion’s business model of extreme planned obsolescence is spreading to other product groups. There has been a rise in the number of kitchen stoves being bought that is higher than any increase in households can explain.

Lasting is not quite on its last legs, it will continue until the end of 2023, and an exhibit is planned in 2024 at Klimahuset to round it all off. However, the main findings were presented at the seminar in front of an audience of students, research partners, NGO and public servant partners, industry organizations and some from the Research Council. The title for the seminar was “Lost in the masses: Is product longevity the solution?”, and the theme has been increasingly relevant as we have seen EU policy focusing more and more on product longevity.

The venue was supposed to have been Sustainathon at Meetingpoint X, which was postponed until next year at the last minute, and the Lasting team did a great job of making the most of the venue-change to OsloMet. A recording of the proceedings is available here.

As mentioned, the main theme was where does durability and longevity have a function, and where is it actually a roadblock, in the meaning that it confounds the discussion and the way forward to reduce volumes and deplastify (mainly) apparel and other textiles? While durability and longevity are important for household appliances, to a certain degree also for furniture – the push and pull forces governing the inflow and outflow of apparel and other textiles has little to do with durability or repairability. On the other hand, when it comes to washing machines, we buy a new one when the old breaks down, so policy governing longevity and the right to repair makes a lot of sense. But what makes sense for one product-group, may not do so for all products in another. “For nylon stockings, maybe, but not for most apparel items,” according to Professor in Clothing and Sustainability, Ingun Grimstad Klepp.

Professor Ingun Klepp engaging the audience.

She went on to explain: “If we are demanding more durable apparel products, using standard tests for strength, pilling, color-fastness, whatever, means more plastic. If we are looking at regulation of waste, eco-modulating fees based on weight, we favor plastic apparel, as synthetics in general are lighter. If we are looking at recycled content as a policy tool, synthetics win again, even though it will mainly be from recycled bottles. And, last but not least, if we use LCAs to dictate what are preferred fibers, again synthetics win.“

Citing research from CHANGE-researcher, Irene Maldini, Klepp went on to explain more on “pull” and “push” forces: Replacement as the driving force for buying something new is only 2,5% of the reason for apparel purchased, as a direct need to replace something that is broken or worn out. Closer to 30% was bought because the item “was on sale” or other occasions that spoke to opportunity. This points to that policy needs much more data on the push and pull forces than is currently available.

The drastic increase in apparel, which far outstrips an increase in need for more (there wasn’t a lack of textiles or footwear in year 2000 and the world population has not doubled in the time span), is also mainly driven by the availability of cheap synthetic fibers, polyester being the largest of these.

Audrun Utskarpen from the Nordic Eco Label, Lorelou Desjardins from the Consumer Council, Associate Professor Johan Berg Pettersen from NTNU, Professors Kate Fletcher and Ingun Grimstad Klepp from SIFO/OsloMet participated in a debate on to what degree product longevity can or cannot impact overproduction. As the Nordic Swan for example already has concrete “durability” demands for products; however, in order to have good baseline data, Utskarpen said that waste audits that could offer good data on what ends up in which waste streams, would be very useful to understand “real life” durability for apparel. Desjardins spoke about their Greenwashing prize, which even gained attention internationally, and was awarded Zalando last year, but also on how their internal research had made her wary of buying almost anything. Pettersen brought up that more and more consumer goods are becoming “disposable” and that waste generation is increasing, not decreasing. Which Klepp pointed to is a production-problem related to massive marketing, and not something we should put on the consumers’ shoulders. “We could ban all marketing as a scenario,” Klepp proposed, as consumers who are – everywhere they turn – told how sustainable their next purchase will be.

Lisbeth Løvbak Berg spoke about different attitudes towards and understanding of longevity between consumers and businesses.

Fletcher suggested that if everyone worked for a week at the Consumer Council, seeing what they uncovered in their daily tasks on toxic chemicals, etc. would quickly suppress the need to buy anything at all. She was, of course, joking, but more seriously she added that the idea that service design in itself will change the systemic problems (rental, repair, etc.) is not proven in any way by research – what is clear is that only if volumes are decreased will new business models have a chance of survival. Pettersen repeated Klepp’s point of strategies focusing on products, rather than systems and that as long as businesses do not actually feel the planetary boundaries, they are not going to change.

Leading up to this debate, Kirsi Laitala, leader of the Lasting project, talked about consumer attitudes towards durability for all the product groups in the project (based on focus groups), and called out one winner on the aspect of durability (obviously not in the textile sector): the Moccamaster coffee machine. Lisbeth Løvbak Berg spoke on the opposing narratives from businesses vs consumers themselves on what actually had a long life – and introduced Chapman’s teddy bear effect as the beacon. The teddy bear turned up again and again after that… as an ideal but also as something that children today have too many of, though probably the most loved one is loved to pieces.

Fletcher reminded us all that durability is not a monolithic construct, and also that it is a weak force compared to economic growth and capitalism – recognize the incompleteness of our knowledge and our colonial legacies we cannot escape. The idea that Western thinking and approaches are relevant everywhere, when they aren’t and we need to be reminded about this again and again, as Harald Throne-Holst, the moderator, reiterated: context, context, context. Being part of a community is a value in other parts of the world, that counts much more than amassing new stuff. Echoed by Pettersen, and relating it also to rebound effects. Not to forget Krych’s industrial ecology insights from her on-going PhD in the project, reminding us also to look at the big picture.

The day was rounded off with a workshop in Norwegian, where a 2023 baseline situation for different consumers was juxtaposed against a 2050 future where limited resources would not make it possible to “live the same life”. The case studies were related to a family with small children, the student on the brink of a new life as a bread winner, and an older couple moving from their house to a smaller apartment. Many interesting options were proposed, f ex more community-based solutions.

The big discussion has just begun. Lasting products will work for many important product-groups, such as household appliances, electronics and even furniture. Nylon stockings are also on the list. Teddy bears: well, the vote is not yet in. The most worn ones are often the most loved.

Used but not used up – what do we know about textile waste?

tobiasson on 23. October 2023

Ingun Grimstad Klepp presenting the findings from the Plastic Elephant

If you are interested in the findings presented during the hybrid seminar, the video and the presentations are now available.

Both the volumes of textile waste, and the interest in what to do with it, is growing. Fortunately, knowledge about what textile waste consists of is also growing, as is the interest to regulate the sector.

In this webinar, we will summarize several recent reports on textile waste in Norway and other countries, as well as a report that examines whether environmental strategies take seriously the fact that if the textiles are to be used up, then less must be produced. The clothes we dispose are often used – but far from used up.

– How can disposed textiles be used in the best possible way to ensure new use, and what kind of knowledge enables us to reduce the amount of used but not used up textiles?
– How much textiles, especially synthetics, are disposed in Norway? What does wasted textiles consist of, why and how are they disposed?
– Which regulatory measures will can be implemented in order to reduce the volumes of textile waste?

Click here to see the video (link).

Click here to find the PDFs of the presentations (link).

This is an open dissemination seminar under the Wasted Textiles research project at SIFO, OsloMet, funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Retailers Environment Fund.

EcoAge Roundtable in Brussels: A fair phase-out of fossil fuels from the fashion industry

tobiasson on 17. October 2023

OsloMet researchers in EU Parliament meeting with EcoAge.

The ethical issues are often discussed separate from environmental issues, it is high time they are discussed in the same room. Therefore, a huge thanks to EcoAge who arranged an important roundtable, and in the Parliament in Brussels, with the heading Calling for a fair phase-out of fossil fuels from the fashion industry.

Livia Firth, founder of EcoAge, introduced and moderated the roundtable. The will to find a common solution for the two issues was the most important element in the meeting, namely a just transition and the phasing out of the over-reliance on synthetics or fossil fuels in fashion. This was manifested with an alternation between people who worked in the different fields and with different ways in to the themes on the agenda. The seminar’s first two presentations were both from the Global south, Betterman Simidi Musaia and Yayra Agbofah, from Ghana and Kenya, virtual presentations that so obviously show the necessity of talking about a plastic reduction, and system change towards more global justice as one and the same. It was very clear from their talks that the environmental and health consequences are grotesque in the countries who receive our unwanted clothes and footwear.

While the fashion industry is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for energy and transport, what is less known is that most of the clothes we wear are also made from oil and gas. Synthetic fiber production uses the equivalent amount of oil per year as the entirety of Spain, and polyester production alone produces the equivalent of 180 coal-fired power-stations annually. What is more, synthetic fibers and plastics are emerging as the fossil fuel industry’s cash-cow – accounting for up 95% of future growth in demand for oil.

There is broad agreement and many good perspectives that the change we need is a systemic change and not a change of individual products. The systems perspective combines the need for change with a global equality perspective, and the need for reduction in quantity and plastification.

The presentation from SIFO was the one that most directly included a criticism of the EU strategy. Irene Maldini explained why the durability discourse falls short for clothing, by referring to research on clothing consumption as a system. This is based on Irene’s own work with clothing consumption and the ongoing work in Change. Ingun Klepp took over the baton by presenting the findings in Plastic Elephant (link here), with an emphasis on how the EU strategy’s emphasis on improvements at product level supports plastification and avoids addressing the main problem: Quantity. In conclusion, she explained how it is possible through regulation to target quantity, and used TPR (link to Targeted Producer Responsibility here) as an example of this. For all good regulation, knowledge is needed. It is therefore urgent to understand the problems better and develop methods suitable for this.

Through the EU’s focus on material durability (synthetics are stronger, and durability leads to accumulation if production volumes are not addressed), weight (synthetics are much lighter) and recyclability (plastics are easier to recycle, and recyclability promotes monomaterials, hence more plastics used), among others.

Many of the participants contacted Maldini and Klepp afterwards, saying that the focus they had was something they had not seen before, with the “proof” that focusing on durability, recyclability and other parameters the EU Textile Strategy does, will increase the amount of synthetics rather than reduce the influx. Also, other aspects of EU policy that is very much ignored in the Textile Strategy was also mentioned – how lack of a holistic approach is problematic. If we are to have “good clothes”, policy really needs to address the right issues.

Saskia Bricmont, MEP, who is Member of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance and the event sponsor, was clearly very engaged in the theme and it will be interesting to see how this can be brought forward in the EU.

Using waste as a resource for knowledge seems like an important way to go, and at Waste Norway’s seminar on October 23rd (link to event here), the latest we know about waste will be presented, from Svalbard in the north and of course also from other parts of Europe.

Klippe, klippe, klippe: A changing discussion of gender

tobiasson on 16. October 2023

Two professors (women) making the "cutting" sign with their fingers.

Part of the CHANGE team recently travelled to the mountains to have a meeting to discuss work in progress. A recurring theme was the Norwegian fairy tale about “Kjerringa mot strømmen” (The hag against the current). The one who even when being drowned by her husband after her insistence that the crop is cut with scissors not his preferred scythe, insists “klippe, klippe, klippe” (cut with scissors).

The group, during the discussion, both agreed about many things, and came up with new thoughts during the meeting, about men and women’s wardrobes and the necessity to discuss gender in the context of sustainability. There is little in our field of study that is not gendered, it concerns the clothes themselves, how they are used, who those of us who are actually studying clothes are and who our informants are. Nevertheless, gender is rarely an important part or even a discussion point in clothing and sustainability research. We talked about why this is so, and what we can do to change this.

In the study of clothing, gender is not the only thing missing, however, gender will always play a role, because we have different bodies and different life stories. Because clothing is physical, they will always relate to the gender in some way. We also discussed how gender is brought in to other areas, such as health, related also to smoking and drinking, and how our bodies tolerate things differently related to gender.

If we acknowledge that gender is a social construct, we still have to deal with bodies as physical. Because both of these conditions are complex and related, this presents additional challenges.

In studies and especially comparisons of men’s and women’s clothing, it is easy to describe the differences, and thus reinforce the stereotypes. We discussed how the stereotypes can removed or challenged, and thus not reinforced. We also revisited Thorstein Veblen’s theories about clothing, which can contribute to a better understanding of systems and power.

We talked briefly about what else is “missing” in the discourse around clothing and sustainability, including the class perspective.

All in all, this discussion pointed to a direction that is important to explore when it comes to different “black holes” or blind spots, that if left un-touched, may end up hampering rather than helping us move forward.

In the fairytale, the women was drowned sticking her hand up above the water making the “clipping” sign with her fingers. She would not give in. Afterwards they could not find her before someone suggested to search for her upstream. And yes, there she was. Kate added to this, that she always thinks it is good idea to look in the least expected direction. We need to remind each other about the limitations of the “obvious”.

The Plastic Elephant tramples into the international conference room

tobiasson on 6. October 2023

Presenting the Plastic Elephant report on stage in Biella.

The opening session at the Natural Fiber Connect conference in Biella, Italy at the very end of September, put the increasingly frequently mentioned elephant in the room center stage, namely overproduction and the plasticization that characterizes the textile industry.

The fact that the Italian Minister of the Environment opened the conference with a video greeting testifies to how important the textile industry is to the Italians, and not least how seriously they take the environmental problems that the same industry stands for. But in contrast to the industry as a whole, they have a great understanding that production, and particularly of synthetic materials, must be reduced considerably – which means more expensive textiles and more focus on natural fibres. This is music to the ears of the Italian industry, but also to natural fiber representatives who had gathered in Biella: cashmere, alpaca, wool, cotton and silk producers from farm level up to spinning mills, weaving mills and other industries.

Weighting the environmental burden

The key note speech was given by Veronica Bates-Kassatly. In contrast to Make The Label Count’s approach, which is currently persistently arguing that more parameters must be included in EU’s PEFCR, such as biodegradability, microplastics and renewability; Bates-Kassatly had the opposite approach. She believes that greenhouse gas emissions must be weighted much more (i.e. CO2 emissions in her argument), and that many of the 16 parameters that the EU’s Joint Research Center has decided should be included should be cut out or weighted much less. This includes water use and land use, two things which turns out to be unfortunate for natural fibres, but where the differences are large on a global basis so that average figures make very little sense. For example, a Norwegian sheep on open pasture will use huge areas of land to produce a few kilograms of wool, and this counts negatively.

Stand to increase plastics rather than decrease

A recent report from SIFO, the Plastic Elephant, followed Bates-Kassatly’s key note and the silk industry’s strong criticism of the data base for Higg and PEF (silk comes out as the worst fibre). The main message in the SIFO report is that a review of policy instruments, strategies from the industry and NGOs shows that to a very small extent they consider what can be done to reduce the volumes and not least to reduce the large increase over the last 40 years in synthetic materials and fast fashion. When the EU’s Textile Strategy wants to make “fast fashion out of fashion”, none of the tools in the toolbox are sufficient and, if anything, they will increase plasticisation. The report explains why, and the audience at the conference nodded their heads tellingly when the reasoning was explained.

The fact that the audience laughed out loud and applauded when the actual background for the Plastic Elephant report was presented at the start was, of course, liberating. This meant taking the audience back to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit in 2017, where the first Pulse report postulated that consumers must be persuaded to prefer synthetics to cotton; and where EcoAge’s Livia Firth asked H&M’s Helena Helmersson: “Why do you have to produce so much and constantly push new collections on consumers?” Helmersson replied that they are only doing what consumers want, to which Firth replied: “My children want sugar every single day, but do I give it to them? No.” The laughter resounded and a huge applause followed.

“Sugar” became the word of the day

The rest of the day, “sugar” was the word repeated over again, as equivalent with unhealthy consumption, and related to synthetics. Which means deplastification – also in the textile sector – may finally be on the agenda. To watch the whole morning session, go to this LinkedIn link. The Plastic Elephant report is easy to find here.

Thriving without growth

ingridha on 5. October 2023

The Amsterdam Economic Board launches a learning journey for clothing companies to reduce their production volumes.

Amsterdam has been a pioneer in recognizing the limits of growth and the need to reduce consumption levels in policy. In 2020, Amsterdam was the first city in the world to commit to the principles of the Doughnut Economy framework, including the notion of sufficiency in consumption volumes. Other cities have followed, such as Brussels, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Cambridge. Although the impact of such strategic decisions on the overall consumption levels of the city is questionable, the fact that local public servants have included a focus on consumption volumes (what really matters to reduce the local impact of the sector) are remarkable.

On 27^th September, in the context of the kickoff of the Amsterdam Economic Board’s program (a commission by the national Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management), our OsloMet colleague Irene Maldini introduced the importance of setting production reduction targets to local companies in her talk “Taking sustainability to the next level: how and why to reduce production and consumption volumes in the clothing sector.” Building her argument on the lack of evidence of the efficacy of well-known strategies in reducing production volumes (such as product lifetime extension, reuse, and shared use), Irene called the audience to overcome fear of economic decline to implement measures that can help confronting overproduction and overconsumption in the sector.

Companies participating in the program are committing to reduce their own production by 5%, a target set by the Amsterdam Economic Board. Participants were left with a few questions to reflect on, such as: Where to start? How will the board, staff, and clients react? Who are the right partners, such as suppliers and retailers, to implement a sufficiency-based strategy? How to establish KPIs for production reductions?

The learning journey is only at the start, during the next three months participants will read relevant texts, carry out given activities at the company, and share their progress and struggle in four sessions. The number of companies engaged is limited. However, the fact that this program is a commission of a national government to promote a post growth mentality among local businesses is groundbreaking. In keeping a focus on production volumes reductions and setting a quantitative target in line with scientists’ advice, the Amsterdam Economic Board has dared to do what the European Commission has consistently avoided in the development of the EU Sustainable and Circular Textiles Strategy: to openly discuss production volumes, the elephant in the room, and further starting to show the elephant its way out.

EU wants data on textile waste, and we have the answer

tobiasson on 13. September 2023

Text by Tone Skårdal Tobiasson

The proposal for the Waste Framework Directive, which is currently being read and analyzed by a myriad of companies, NGOs, researchers, policy-makers and interested citizens throughout Europe, handles two major consumer ‘goods’: Textiles and food. We are mainly concerned with the former, however, we have found that food offers us two good guiding principles.

The first one is to eat up what is on your plate. The second is waste audits as a means to gain meaningful knowledge on what gets “eaten up” and what doesn’t. In three separate documents, we ask the EU to heed these two guiding principles and apply them to apparel and other textiles.

One of the documents is our feedback on the textile part of the Waste Framework Directive (read the document here), where the authors have concrete recommendations for ensuring that the policy measures in the WFD can actually contribute to the EU’s ambition of putting fast fashion out of fashion. Currently, the Duration of Service is what is lacking in the available data (how long apparel has been in use and to what level the apparel and textile waste is ‘used up’ ), but even if the background document (#4) states “There is currently no sound method of estimating textile waste (collected and discarded in mixed municipal waste)”, this is just not true. And the two other papers elaborate on exactly this point. Waste audits/waste composition studies – which are very much used when gaining data on food waste – and wardrobe studies – are well-developed methods.

The document Status for developing methods for using waste as a resource for knowledge about the use phase of clothing (read the document here), offers an overview of exactly the current status for these methods, while the document USED, BUT NOT USED UP: Using textile waste to inform textile rating schemes (read the document here) explores how the data-collection methodology using waste audits can underpin several policy measures, such as the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules, Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Labelling and Digital Product Passport (DPP), the Green claims directive, as well as EPR and the WFD. We have called the ongoing waste audit method for Targeted Producer Responsibility (TPR), as we originally saw it as a more effective means for levelling a EPR fee, using the Duration of Service as the measuring stick. However, we also now have realized that taking the waste as the point of departure, has many other ramifications that can be leveraged.

The cut-off point for feedback to the WFD keeps being postponed, but we encourage everyone to respond, as a functioning EPR scheme which actually takes the waste hierarchy seriously, can be reality, if we use waste audits as the basis for eco-modulating the fee. What we urgently need is for companies to add the date of production or when the product goes to market to the brand label. Then we can look both upstream, and downstream, from the time apparel and other textiles enter the different waste streams.

The plastic elephant in the room: Who dares to talk about it?

tobiasson on 4. September 2023

In the Consumption Research Norway SIFO report The plastic elephant: Overproduction and synthetic fibers in sustainable textile strategies we examine national, international and corporate strategies for sustainable textiles to understand whether, and if so, how they include the problem of increased production volumes based on synthetic materials that can be referred to as the ‘plastic elephant in the room’.

”It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room.” This is a quote from the 2014 GFA Fashion Summit in Copenhagen, when Livia Firth, founder of the consultancy EcoAge and the Green Carpet Challenge, was on a panel with H&M. She challenged the growth issue where “fast fashion brands justify growth by saying that it is the consumers who demand the wide selection and diversity of fashion styles today”. Firth responded to this claim made by H&M’s Helena Helmersson by saying that her children want candy all the time but that does not mean they should have it, and that as a parent she has “a responsibility in addressing this want”.

In order to find out whether different strategies take seriously the connection between overproduction and the enormous growth in the consumption of clothing and textiles, and the increase in the use of synthetic materials, we asked four questions to the strategies. First, we looked at whether the strategies discuss growth in production volumes and possible measures to stop this growth. Second, we examined whether they address the plastification of textiles. By plastification, we mean the increasing share of plastic fibres used for textile production. Third, we exmined whether they discuss the raw material for plastics, and fourth, plastic waste. The results show that none of these questions that can reduce the environmental impacts of clothing production are given a central role in the strategies. There were three types of strategies that were examined: policy, industry and NGOs’ sustainability strategies.

Important findings

The most interesting findings are related to the reduction of the use of synthetic fibres – the plastification. This is the question that receives the overall lowest scores: none of the strategies present clear, direct measures to halt plastification, though some of the public policymakers indirectly include such a goal, through goals of substituting fossil raw materials in the production with other materials, including bioplastics. Without stating how this tendency is to be reversed, the strategies raise concerns over the increasing volumes of fossil raw materials used in textile production. It is also suggested that synthetic fibres have important qualities that are needed and the strategy of substituting virgin plastics with recycled plastics is particularly present in the strategies of the industry stakeholders.

The Plastic Elephant is a part of the project Wasted Textiles, the goal of which is precisely to reduce the use of synthetic textiles and the amount that goes to waste. It is situated right at the core of the project’s goal and of course, the project is also the reason why our elephant is synthetic textiles (i.e., plastic). At the same time, we are building on work from three other ongoing projects at Consumption Research Norway (SIFO): CHANGE – about quantity, LASTING – about lifetime and REDUCE – about plastics in everyday life; and we thank our good colleagues from all the three projects for fruitful conversations as well as heated debates. We thank in particular Kirsi Laitala, Marie Hebrok, Harald Throne-Holst, Irene Maldini, Kate Fletcher and Kerli Kant Hvass for their thorough reading of the report and constructive comments.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Productive project publishes again

tobiasson on 1. September 2023

The researchers studying the Polish mountain wool.

The scientific article Sound Absorption of Tufted Carpets Produced from Coarse Wool of Mountain Sheep has been published in Journal of Natural Fibers. The article is co-authored by Jan Broda, Katarzyna Kobiela-Mendrek, Marcin Bączek, Monika Rom and Ingvild Espelien, and is an important contribution to the study of wool’s properties.

As part of the ongoing research in the WOOLUME project, looking at good utilization of coarse Polish mountain wool, is an important exploration. Tufting is a technique with cut and loop piles and to which degree this technique used on coarse wool can contribute to sound absorbing properties is interesting to study.

Some tufting history

Wool from Polish mountain sheep is coarse, highly differentiated both in thickness and length and contains a significant content of medullated fibers and kemp. Despite its poor characteristics, the wool can be used for the production of rag yarns fit for pile carpets with tufting technique. The carpets possess acceptable sound absorbing capacity comparable to other similar products obtained from other wool types, which is dependent on both pile types and their parameters.

The hand tufting technique was invented at the end of the nineteenth century in Dalton (Georgia, USA) where it was first applied for handicraft production of bedspreads, mats, and bathrobes. The technique involves stitching the yarn into the backing fabric to create a loop, cut, or mixed piles. Loop piles are formed when the yarn inserted is caught by loopers and pulled through the backing to a set length. Cut piles are formed by cutting the piles at their maximum length, with blades operating in tandem with the loopers. In the 1930s, a modified single-needle commercial sewing machine was adopted for tufting. The machine enabled tufting of thick yarn into muslin without tearing the fabric and was coupled with a knife to cut the loops.

Further development

In the next few years, tufting machines with four, then eight, twenty-four, or more needles enabling the formation of parallel rows were constructed. Machines were introduced to the industrial practice, which soon resulted in the rapid growth of the mechanized tufting industry. After the second world war, in the 1950s, tufting machines were getting more and more common and were equipped with several hundred needles to stitch hundreds of pile yarn rows. In the next years, tufting dominated carpet manufacturing. It is estimated that nowadays, tufting is a common technique widely used for the production of 90% of the carpets available in the market. The introduction of the tufting technique on a large scale coincided with the development of new synthetic fibers. Application of these fibers significantly accelerated the growth of carpet production. The new yarns, continuous filament nylon yarns in particular, provided good quality and high durability of carpets at a relatively low price, out-performing wool as the raw-material with a much cheaper price point.

Wool carpets used as floor coverings and interior decorations offer additional considerable advantages in terms of thermal insulation and heat balance in buildings. Moreover, such carpets are highly effective in controlling indoor noise and reducing the reverberation of sound. Carpets are some of the most versatile sound-absorbing materials which absorb both airwave sounds and reduce surface noise generation. Additionally, carpets reduce the impact of sound transmission between stories in multi-storied buildings.

Detailed characterization

In our previous studies, the acoustic performance of felt and fabrics manufactured from Polish mountain sheep wool was analyzed. The investigations showed that the wool of mountain sheep, which is often disregarded and treated as a waste product of sheep husbandry, is a valuable raw material that can be used to produce carpets and panels with good sound-absorbing properties. The paper presents the results of further studies on the utilization of coarse wool obtained from mountain sheep to produce rag yarns suitable for the production of pile carpets with the tufting technique. During this investigation, the raw wool and yarns were characterized in detail, and the possibility of using yarns in the tufting technique was explored. Then, the sound absorption capacity and transmission loss of the obtained materials in relation to the type of piles, pile height, and density were analyzed.

Conclusion: Apart from their decorative function, carpets produced from Polish mountain sheep wool with the tufting technique can serve as valuable sound absorbing material to lessen noise, reduce reverberation, and improve the acoustic comfort of the room.

Access to the full article is provided in this link.

This research was funded by the Norway Grant titled “Polish sheep wool for improved resource utilisation and value creation.” NOR/POLNOR/WOOLUME/0007/2019

Garbage talk: Easily outdated, but difficult to date

Lisbeth Løvbak Berg on 15. August 2023

Text by Tone Skårdal Tobiasson

The results from the Wasted Textiles pilot study, executed by four Master-students Camilla Sunde (UiO), Eva Hovda (NTNU), Siri Vestengen (NTNU) and Saeid Sheikhi (Høyskolen Kristiania) has now been published. Avfall Norge and their summer program REdu, were able to get the pilot financed by The Norwegian Retail Environmental Fund, and the results from the pilot where the four students tested out a system for picking analysis that captures vital information on the textiles that mainly had status as garbage is presented in the report.

The analysis conducted in Slemmestad Mepex-center offers valuable insights into the current status of discarded textiles in Norway. The “TPR” (named for the Targeted Producer Responsibility idea) picking analysis results provide us with information regarding the composition of fibres, garment age, country of production, and brand details of the discarded textiles. This data was taken from the care labels on the products. Over a period of 13 days, the team successfully managed to analyze a total of 3024 items using the TPR picking analysis method that they fine-tuned based on a combination of wardrobe studies and classic waste picking analysis.

Picking analyzes are used for other product groups to say something about use. In food, this form of analysis is used to monitor how much edible food is thrown away from private households (see e.g., this study (miljodirektoratet.no)) and to monitor and reduce food waste from institutions. The textiles analysed in the report originated from various waste streams: Mepex’s “Klesbyttedag” (clothing swap day), TRV (Trondheim city pilot project on collecting textiles) and residual waste. Residual waste is the hardest to work with because of smell and humidity making it difficult to weigh the items. In the report, the TRV waste is the largest and most important, representing 91.4 % of the material. Textiles from TRV-pilot are supposed to be damaged textiles. Residents of the pilot area in Trondheim were given instructions and special bags for damaged textiles, clothing and shoes. Residents are encouraged to deliver usable textiles to collection boxes already located in the area and to put the bag with destroyed textiles outside for collection on a fixed day, every four weeks. The interns photographed all the items, gave each textile item a number, and registered information on if the brand could be identified if the care label was intact if there was a year of production or when the product entered the market anywhere on the textile, country of origin, fibre-composition, what state of ‘used up-ness’ the items were in, the weight, etc.

The findings in the REdu project, are based on a small sample, 3024 items all in all. 2564 of 3024 items (the total registered) had the brand present either on the label or a logo visible. 708 distinct brands were identified, but a few dominated, H&M being in the lead, followed by Cubus, Lindex and KappAhl. Out of the 3025 analysed textiles only 95 items had the year of production on their care labels, 2905 did not include this information. Of these clothing pieces 14 of them were from NameIt (a Danish children’s brand), 7 from Vero Moda, 7 from Selected – all three Bestseller brands, and 6 of them were from Bik Bok. For the remaining individual brands, 61 items were with a production year. Some brands have labels with codes that may or may not contain this information, that they would need to explain. Some brands said they are willing to help with this information.

The progress in the TPR picking analysis time efficiency showcases the potential for applying picking analysis and the time it might require. In the TPR approach, they utilised several input parameters and managed to analyse an average of 234 items per day, equivalent to around 79 kg. On the other hand, the “fast TPR method” employed fewer input parameters while still capturing details for each item. With this approach, the average number of items examined within a 30-minute span is 29, equal to 7.6 kg per person. The time used to analyze was affected by the different textiles analysed, whereas multilayer and complicated multi-fibre items were more time-consuming.

In assessing the potential of machine learning in textile waste management, the results are promising, but not without challenges. The initial model focusing on textile type classification achieved significant accuracy, with an accuracy of 82.25 %, emphasizing the practicality of using automation for sorting textiles. However, the usability classification model highlighted the need for comprehensive and quality data inputs to predict an item’s reuse potential. While machine learning presents great promise in enhancing sorting efficiency, determining reusability, and promoting fibre-to-fibre recycling, its successful deployment hinges on several factors. These include the expansion and quality improvement of datasets, the integration of advanced sensing technologies, and a broader assessment of environmental, economic, and social impacts. Ethical considerations are paramount, especially in ensuring that machine learning models operate effectively and ethically. By partnering with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, feedback loops between producers and waste management can be optimized.

The data gathered from the examined items highlights the possibility of reusing materials in the textile sector that the consumers themselves deem as garbage. Assessing the level of wear and tear in clothing was relatively easy, factors like pilling, stains, discolouration, damaged zippers, missing buttons, holes, and general signs of use are easy to spot and register. A majority of the items were in a good usability state, where 42% of the textiles scored a condition of 4 (5 being the highest score indicating mint condition, while 1 is not at all reusable), suggesting that the discarded textiles were not “used up”. Also, 21 items were found with their price tags still attached. While some items displayed minor damages, many of these can be fixed effortlessly at home, pointing towards the value of imparting basic repair skills to consumers. Notably, 17.66% of items had a maximum usability score of 5, indicating a considerable number of nearly new items being discarded. We will remind the reader there that these were supposed to be worn out or «broken» items, as fully usable textiles were supposed to be donated in the donation boxes.

The data obtained from this analysis holds significant importance in comprehending the possibilities of automated sorting, material reuse, and recycling. It provides a foundation for introducing strategic methods like extended producer responsibility (EPR) and policies focused on waste prevention. Hopefully, the TPR picking analysis can be used to assess eco-modulated environmental fees in an EPR scheme, aiming to ultimately decrease excessive textile production in the fast fashion sector. In 2022, 105 913 tonnes of new textiles which are equivalent to 19.3 kg per capita, were put on the Norwegian market, so future data collection is not in danger of not having materials to study, once textile waste will be collected separately from 2025.

Click here to read the full report (avfallnorge.no).