If they can’t be used second-hand, is it possible to recycle old clothes? What about recycling other fabrics and textiles? An Australian company, BlockTexx, has recently received funding to build a textile recovery facility in Queensland. Using technology developed by Queensland University of Technology researchers, the plant will take old textiles and turn them into raw materials that can be used by other industries.

One of the central problems with textiles is that they’re often a mix of completely different chemicals – such as cotton and polyester. This makes them very difficult to turn into new, high-quality products. The separation-of-fibre technology (S.O.F.T.) process developed by QUT, however, separates the polyester and cotton in textiles completely, allowing them to be used for other purposes.

Cosmos spoke to Robert Speight, a professor at QUT, and Adrian Jones, a co-founder of BlockTexx, about the technology and its environmental implications.

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Turning textiles into raw materials