Circular fashion: Properties of fabrics made from mechanically recycled poly-ethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles

摘要

Use of recycled fibres in apparel is being seen as one of the major ways to achieve sustainability and circular economy in textile industry. Waste poly-ethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles create serious disposal problem as they are not biodegradable. In recent years, many companies have started to collect the waste PET bottles and upcycle them, by melting and extruding, into textile grade polyester fibre. This paper presents an exhaustive study on the properties of mechanically recycled polyester fibres and fabrics. The recycled polyester fibre has lower level of crystallinity and tensile strength than its virgin counterpart. The transmission properties like air permeability and moisture vapour permeability of fabric do not change significantly with the increase in proportion of recycled polyester. However, the shear and bending rigidities of woven fabric tend to increase (24-44% and 9-26%, respectively) with the incorporation of recycled polyester. This implies that the fabric becomes stiffer and less pliable when recycled polyester fibre is used and thus the virgin and recycled polyester fibres cannot be considered as functionally equivalent for life cycle or other analysis.