Recycling Synthetic Fabrics – Infographic

We all have used it, in-fact you might be wearing it right now. From branded hoodie to swim suits, it is everywhere, and we all love them. Synthetic fabric comes in all shape, size and fashion. Synthetic occupies about half of market share in apparel industry.

But large population of us are undermining the fact that, after heavy use, numerous washes, wear & tear it leaves trail of synthetic pollutants. Not to mention, after a while we throw it out, ones that reach landfill will take many hundred years before it decomposes. On its way it will pollute other natural entities. 

Production of Synthetic Fabrics

Polyester production is a sophisticated process. Estimated 63,000 million tonnes of polyester fiber is produced every year around the world. Which sums up to be about half of the world’s fiber demand. Production process uses large quantities of chemical and raw materials. Produces by-products that are harmful to living beings & environment. By-products are toxic and pollutes water and air if not handled correctly. (Source)

Synthetic fiber / Polyester raw materials are created after synthesizing petrochemical products by a process called polymerization. It is then converted to fiber then to fabric and finally sewed to apparels. 

Usage

Sports, and outdoor apparel industries are one of the top users of synthetic fiber. This makes synthetic fiber / Polyester the most widely used fiber in the apparel sector. 

Environmental Effects of Synthetic Fabrics

It is an unfortunate fact that repeated washing, use, and wear of synthetic fiber releases micro-particles to the environment. Even more, those micro-particles are consumed by small organisms which end up affecting the natural food chain. In order to reduce these environmental effects it is very important to recycle synthetic clothes.

Recycling Synthetic Fabrics

One advantage of synthetic fabrics is it can be recycled. Whatever left of used, end-of-life synthetic fabric apparel, can be recycled. Recycling synthetic fabrics is a cumbersome process. But we do encourage all our readers to recycle any end of life & unused synthetic clothes. This will make sure polyester won’t reach a landfill, causing more leakage to environment. We did some research on synthetic fiber recycling. Here is a Synthetic fiber Recycle Infographic we created based on the information we have collected.(Source)