The concept of sustainable development and recycling have become the focus of many industry developments. The concept of sustainable development has been adopted by more and more companies as the company's development goals, and closed loop and renewable use have become the pursuit of corporate technology. A number of companies or groups published information on the recycling of renewable polyesters.
The H&M Group released the 2017 Sustainability Report in April. The report pointed out that the H&M Group's three key strategic strategic goals include 100% leading the fashion industry revolution, 100% closed loop and renewable and 100% fairness and equality.
The picture shows the finished product of H&M. Here is the original raw material for making it.
On the eve of World Environment Day, Nike released the 2016-2017 Financial Sustainability Business Report. According to the report, Nike has been recognized for four years in a row as the industry's largest supplier of recycled polyester materials. In fiscal 2017, 75% Nike footwear and apparel products use recycled materials.
According to the report of the food and beverage industry mini-news, the European Bottled Water Association announced that the use rate of recycled plastic PET bottles in the year 2025 was not less than 25%, and the PET recycling rate was 90%. Coca-Cola stated that its bottled water accounted for the proportion of recycled plastics in bottles by 2025. (Up from 21% in 2016) up to 50%.
It is understood that, in general, the recycled chemical fiber used in the apparel industry is made from recycled PET, while the foreign beverage bottle is used in the bottle-to-bottle technical application. Then, how does the recycled PET polyester material come from the 'old'? What is the change to 'new look'?
Here's a simple combing of how bottles return to bottles and clothes.
The home of the bottle
Is it their final destination to throw drink bottles into the trash? It's not.
After being consumed, polyester plastic products used as daily necessities, such as beverage bottles and oil bottles, are collected, sorted, conveyed, cleaned, dried, melted, spun, and resold as garbage; , It may become a carpet, a warm bedding or a piece of clothing; but it is also possible that it will become a bottle again and again.
So, it's very likely that the bottle you've thrown away will come back to you.
The recycled beverage bottles go through a series of remanufacturing processes, eventually becoming recycled polyester fibers, then spun into fabrics, and finally into clothes, carpets, sofas, artificial lawns, geotextiles, filter media, automotive parts, etc. Behind the output value of 4, 5 billion it!
So what went from the bottle to the recycled polyester fiber?
Beverage bottle to regenerate polyester fiber
The first thing to know is what is recycled polyester fiber. Recycled polyester fiber is a waste polyester plastic products, waste textiles as raw materials, processed by melt spinning or polymer depolymerization and polymerization spinning fiber formed. To say that we are referring to the polyester, but here is a recycled product, so it can be called renewable polyester.
This also explains why bottles can be made into clothes: they are all polyesters.
Which bottles can be recycled into recycled polyester fibers?
The above-listed bottles can all be, of course, oil barrels, but they need to be professionally cleaned and thoroughly purified before they can be used. Otherwise, oil contamination will affect later production. However, medical, pesticide bottles are not included.
In addition, in addition to bottles, there are other things that can be made into recycled polyester fibers. There are bottles, tablets, films, blocks, belts, waste wires and waste textiles, that is, things that contain polyester plastics, as long as they are not hazardous waste. , can be recycled.
How does the beverage bottle turn? Simply speaking, the bottle is recycled, pulverized, cleaned, dried, melted, spun, and a series of processes, and finally it becomes our clothes.
The transfiguration process has a complete process embodied in the "Chemical Fibre White Paper."
Understand the above production process, it is easy to understand what the article said at the beginning of the H & M Group, Nike and Coca-Cola is how recycled polyester recycling.
It is reported that in 2017, the H&M Group recycled a total of 17,771 tons of textiles through the used clothing recycling program, in which more than 482 tons of textiles were recovered in the Chinese market for reuse and recycling; Nike used landfill technology through Nike Grind’s environmental protection technology. The site converted more than 12.5 million pounds of factory and post-consumer waste, and the waste produced in the Chinese factories decreased by 5.5% year-on-year.
So what is the significance of recycled polyester fiber to humans?
The data shows that each recycling of 1 ton of recycled products can reduce 6 tons of oil consumption and reduce 3.2 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by 200 trees in 1 year.
At the same time, the properties of recycled polyester fibers are comparable to those of primary fibers. Some properties, such as resilience, smoothness, and bulkiness of recycled three-dimensional filled staple fibers, are even higher than those of primary fibers. Therefore, regardless of carbon emissions, Social responsibility, or resource investment, the importance of recycled polyester fiber to humanity is beyond doubt.