Textile-Recycling

How textile recycling works

These textile residues or textile wastes were then originally chopped, which is why older contemporary witnesses still refer to GLAESER as a so-called “rag pick”. Today, these textile residues and textile wastes are processed into so-called shoddy fibers with state-of-the-art processing and tearing machines. In this recycling process, the textile waste is first cut into small snippets with a cleaver (guillotine). These textile snippets are then evenly and homogeneously mixed in large Mix Masters. In the subsequent tearing process, fibers are then produced from the textile scraps in a multi-stage tearing process.

For this purpose, the snippets are held in place by rollers, so that fast-rotating swifts with their pins can comb out or tear more and more fibers out of the textiles with ever greater precision.

Depending on the quality of the raw materials (i.e. the textile wastes and residues) and depending on the needs of the customer, the processed fibers can be produced using a variety of different settings using a different number of tambours (tearing stations).

Depending on the requirements for the textile recycling or fibers, textile residues and wastes from the textile industry (post-industrial) or consumer waste (post-consumer) can be processed here.

Post-industrial and post-consumer

In the case of post-industrial wastes or residues, which are post-industrial raw materials for us, any type of textile wastes can be recycled. Here, filament waste from filament spinning mills can be processed in the form of polyester, viscose and polyamide. At the same time, tow waste from the polyester, acrylic, viscose and polyamide fiber manufacturers can also be processed. In addition, selvedges from the weaving mill, all types of knitwear, knitted fabrics and warp-knitted fabrics are utilized. At the same time, any kind of offcuts and leftovers from the clothing industry can also be recycled.

A large area is also the processing of many types of non-woven, non-woven fabrics and needle felts. Fiber mixtures can also be recycled here. In this segment, we often only work as a contract company.

Wastes from the bedding and pillow industry as well as from the manufacture of quilts can also be recycled at any time into interesting qualities.

At the same time, post-consumer textile wastes (so-called used [„old“] textiles) are also processed and recycled. These raw materials come from the sorting of used clothing. These are the sorting fractions that cannot be reused either as clothing or as cleaning rags. These different grading categories have different fiber raw materials, be it more acrylic, cotton, wool or mixed synthetics.

Similarly, more and more worn-out clothing textiles are processed from laundries, clothing manufacturers and the public sector. This clothing must then be freed from all hard parts, such as zippers, buttons and rivets and possibly also from official emblems. Only then the goods can be torn. In this way, a closed loop can also be created for clothing textiles.

Sustainability is key

It is extremely important to us that textile residues and textile wastes are 100% processed and recycled so that they do not end up in landfills or incineration. In this way, valuable and expensive new goods in the form of textile raw materials and fibers can be saved. Through this a lot of energy can be saved, in addition to raw materials, because the production of synthetic fibers is very energy-intensive. At the same time, the protection of fresh cotton or wool also saves a lot of natural resources, such as water in particular. The cultivation of cotton, in particular, devours vast amounts of water and requires a great deal of fertilizer and pesticides.

In summary, this textile recycling can significantly improve the eco-balance of the entire textile industry. The reduction of CO2 emissions through the avoidance of combustion and the reduction of primary production must be emphasized here particularly!

This improvement in the CO2 footprint can be achieved in particular with all cycle concepts. Here, the textile residues as well as the textile and fabric wastes are to be processed back into products in closed recycling cycles. In this process we can contribute to fiber production.

Textile recycling as a service: perfect re-use of raw materials

In many areas of the textile industry and especially in the area of non-wovens, needle felts and nonwovens are also regularly and very successfully worked on a job-processing basis.
Here, the source of these textiles provides the residual material or wastes and we tear and process these textiles into fibers for a service fee. The advantage of this process is that the source of this waste knows 100% of the composition, which fibers or exact raw material mixtures and compositions were contained in the nonwovens and needle felts. Consequently, these processed shoddy fibers can flow back into the new production of these products.

That means we take over the residual materials from the partner, which remain their possession and only take care of the processing and recycling of these textiles into fibers. The advantage for our partner with this type of textile recycling is that he knows the exact composition and fiber mixture best and can therefore fully incorporate the recycled and processed shoddy fibers into his new production of such products after our textile recycling process is done.

Fiber variety

With all these industrial wastes or industrial raw materials, any fiber type is also processed in mixtures: cotton, viscose, wool, polyester, acrylic, polyamide, polypropylene, para-aramid, meta-aramid, preox, panox, modacrylic, kapok, kenaf, jute, sisal etc … and everything mostly in white or mixed in different colors.

Our vision

Let’s work together to conserve textile raw materials, natural resources and energies in a wide variety of forms – let’s make sustainability our beloved reality – let’s make our world a little bit better through textile recycling – use GLAESER’s recycling know-how since 1888!