Creating profitable—and sustainable—solutions to fast fashion
A textile recycling innovation at the University of Minnesota Duluth could help solve a 92-million-ton challenge in the fashion industry.
Ninety-two million tons of textiles are discarded globally each year, and that number is growing. That’s about one garbage truck full of clothing and other textiles discarded every second. If that’s a difficult figure to wrap your head around, you’re not alone.
A huge part of the clothing-waste challenge is fast fashion, which emphasizes making clothing cheaply and getting it into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible.
But associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering Abbie Clarke-Sather and students at the University of Minnesota Duluth have created a new way to turn those otherwise wasted textiles into usable products, with the potential to both sharply cut down on waste and find new revenue sources for businesses and nonprofits.
Less fashion waste, more revenue
At the University of Minnesota Duluth, Clarke-Sather’s expertise crosses disciplines, where, as part of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, she has combined her expertise in engineering design through collaborations within the University of Minnesota System and outside experts in apparel design, fiber production, textile science, and geotextiles. It’s that fusion that first sparked the idea to address sustainability issues in the fashion industry.
“My mom told me ‘waste not, want not,’” says Clarke-Sather. “I think most people grew up that way—we're trying to conserve our resources, and we don't want to waste things. But styles change, our sizes change, and we have to get rid of clothes sometimes.”
The University of Minnesota Duluth’s Applied Sustainable Product Innovation and Resilient Engineering (ASPIRE) Lab, led by Clarke-Sather, has developed a recycling machine unlike anything else in use today. It’s something she and recent graduate student Paulo Alves, who helped create the machine as part of his master’s thesis, call the Fiber Shredder.
The device shreds existing textiles back down to reusable fibers in 90 seconds. Unlike machines already on the market that cut fibers, the Fiber Shredder pulls them apart, keeping fibers longer and making them much easier to reuse in yarns and other materials.
“No one else around the world has been capable of doing this as we're doing it,” says Alves. “We not only have the resources, but we have a lot of companies around here that are manufacturing different types of textiles.”
It’s a device that meets both consumers and retailers where they’re at. Organizations such as Duluth’s True North Goodwill sort and resell donations that would otherwise end up in a landfill, but ultimately, they receive more textiles than they can process. So Clarke-Sather is partnering with True North Goodwill to find ways to manage surplus textiles, improving sustainability while also getting more value from those unwanted materials.
“They [True North] want to get value from every piece of clothing that people donate, because their mission is also to put people to work,” says Clarke-Sather. “And so recycling textiles is an opportunity to create new kinds of employment, including skilled manufacturing.”
Now that she and her team have a working prototype, Clarke-Sather and a new generation of University of Minnesota Duluth graduate and undergraduate students are working to scale it for commercial use. The goal? To see the machine in every Goodwill and thrift store across the country.
Already, other local businesses are stepping forward, like Shoreview Natives, a Two Harbors, Minnesota-based plant nursery that is testing recycled textiles for use as weed-suppression mats in landscaping, and Grumpelstiltskin's Fiber Mill, located in Culver, Minnesota, which is testing a blend of recycled fibers and alpaca fiber for use in rugs and other products.
“I'm very proud about designing a machine that can actually change how things are done around the world, especially about textile waste," Alves says. “It was amazing to have this opportunity and to make it become a reality."
