A FibreSort machine is being trialled by SATCoL, (Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd), the trading arm of The Salvation Army, and which describes itself as the largest charity-owned textiles collector in the UK to prevent end-of-life clothes from reaching landfill.
By repurposing items, the organisation has said that it has diverted over 250 million items per year away from landfills. Also, to stimulate the recycling market, SATCoL is working closely with companies in the sector and is seeking advice on different recycling trials.
It also aims to extend the life of products using various reuse and recycling schemes in a bid to lower the environmental impact and promote circularity.
The organisation receives about 60,000 tonnes of textile donations each year, explained Marjonne Frost, the head of environment and sustainability at SATCoL, at the Source Fashion event in Olympia London last month.
Most of these donations are reusable and are resold through the charity stores of the organisation, but around 10-20 per cent of the donations are at the ‘end-of-life’ stage and unrepairable, she said.
SATCoL’s team also revealed during the panel discussion the steps involved to give old clothes a new life and make them ready to be reused.
The first ‘big step,’ Frost explained is sorting normal wearable textiles into various fabrics and colours with the help of the Fibresort machine. The Fibresort machine uses smart technology and helps save manual labour by separating items into fibre types such as cotton, wool, and even identifies mixed-fibre blends and colours.
Elaborating on the use of Fibresort, Frost said, “Even though there’s already fibre content mentioned on the garment labels we often find that once the items go through the Fibresort machine, the labels aren’t always accurate. This means the fibre content and percentage doesn’t correspond to what’s on the labels.
“Also, when you take into consideration the lifetime of the items that get donated, sometimes days old and other times from 50 years ago, the labels are either worn out or cut off. There’s no information available. Not to forget the process that otherwise we would have to go through for sorting these items” she added.
SATCoL’s marketing manager, Charlene Bent, highlighted that “while the lower-grade items, as discussed, go through Fibresort technology so they can continue to be recycled and put back into the fashion supply chain,” higher-grade items can be distributed to over 240 salvation army charity shops.
