Quantity and quality of clothing and household textiles in the Danish household waste.

Despite the fact that studies have indicated that a large proportion of textiles is disposed in the waste, only few studies have looked at the content of textiles in waste, and even less have considered the quality of these textiles. However, it is crucial to know both quantity and quality, in order to assess the potential for improved reuse and recycling. Following a new method for assessing the quantity and quality of textile waste, this study assessed residual household waste from 17 areas and small combustible waste from six recycling stations throughout Denmark. The average contents of Clothing and Household textiles in residual household waste were 1.4 ±â€¯0.5% and 0.6 ±â€¯0.3%, respectively, whereas the content was 4.5 ±â€¯2.1% for Clothing and 2.6 ±â€¯1.2% for Household textiles in the small combustibles. On an annual basis each resident discards to 2.4 ±â€¯0.9 kg of Clothing and 1.1 ±â€¯0.5 kg/resident/year of Household textiles with the residual household waste. The quality assessments showed, that an average of 65 ±â€¯8.0% and 65 ±â€¯19.3% of the Clothing and Household textiles were reusable in the residual household waste, while in small combustibles it were an average of 69 ±â€¯5.8% and 66 ±â€¯9.6% of the Clothing and Household textiles. In addition, an average of 12 ±â€¯5.3% and 15 ±â€¯10.5% of the Clothing and Household textiles in residual waste, and an average of 14 ±â€¯3.9% and 16 ±â€¯8.7% of the Clothing and Household textiles in small combustibles, could be recycled. This emphasizes that there is good potential for improving textile waste management, as most of the identified Clothing and Household textiles were misplaced and little were actually waste.

Development and testing of a sorting and quality assessment method for textile waste.

Due to the high resource consumption and environmental impacts of textile production, better handling of discarded materials has a great environmental improvement potential. A uniform definition of textile waste and a stringent sorting procedure is a precondition for thorough investigations of discarded textiles. A review of waste sorting studies showed that only a few included textiles, and mainly considered content and not quality. A lack of definition and quality assessment causes a high risk of mistakes when assessing the potential of textile waste prevention. This study establishes a method for sorting and quality assessment of textiles in household waste, validated through dialogue with professional textile sorting centres. It also suggests a minimum waste sample size. The quality assessment is based on analysis of product types, manufacturing methods, fibre composition and a product condition assessment based on 17 criteria. The developed method was applied in a case study and compared with other sorting methods. It showed that 61% of the clothing in residual waste and 83% in small combustibles and that 78% of the household textiles in residual waste and 85% in small combustibles was reusable or recyclable. The comparison with existing methods showed that sorted quantities varied significantly when different sorting methods were applied even when the sorting was done on the same sample. This study suggests a new standard for defining and assessing categories and qualities of used textiles, adapted to real contemporary sorting technologies, and tested on waste samples.