Cotton Australia Buries the Problem of Textile Waste
Cotton Australia is working on a new way of dealing with textile waste: burying it.
Not in a landfill but in the very same field the fiber might have come from to begin with. The organization is about to embark on the next phase of an experiment to recycle used 100 percent cotton clothing and bedlinens by shredding them, mixing them into the top layer of the soil and adding water. In time, disintegrating cotton-only fabrics leave behind an environment that appears to be suited for the kind of bugs and nutrients cotton plants thrive in.
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“The bugs have a party,” said Oliver Knox, associate professor of soil systems biology at Australia’s University of New England, New South Wales. “All [the waste] needs is moisture, warmth and fungi.”
Achieving circularity was the motivation behind the experiment when it started in the Goondiwindi region in 2019, according to Cotton Australia. Australians currently toss more than 50 of the 55 pounds of clothing and textiles they purchase every year.
Before 2017, the 800,000 tons of textile waste generated annually by Australia was getting exported to China, according to Brooke Summers, cotton to market lead at Cotton Australia.
Initial experiments involved lab-based testing of very small squares of cotton fabrics to monitor the degradation process and see how carbon and water retention were affected. All but the tightest weaves broke down significantly in about 24 weeks. Cotton seeds germinated as well in the soil/cotton mix.
Textiles in the project come from a variety of sources. One is a local company that deals with clothing deadstock. A second is Sheridan, one of Australia’s largest suppliers of bedlinens that is a division of Hanesbrands and which already has an ambitious sustainability program. For this experiment, they used end-of-life bedsheets received from staff who cleaned out their closets, in addition to manufacturing offcuts.
At first, fabric samples were cut into small squares by hand, but later batches were processed by a recycling company. Summers said that in the likely event the project becomes scalable, the textiles will be ground up by cotton gins that are idle in the off-season. Scientists will determine what is the best format for the cotton to be spread, pellets perhaps, as it comes out of the machine. “We’d love to see this create regional employment,” said Summers of Cotton Australia.
Some of the textiles had dyes in them but that has had no effect on the experiment to date. Going forward, cotton put down on the soil will be restricted to pure cotton without dyes or patterns, and no fabrics blended with polyester will be used. Natural fibers like viscose or wool are ripe for the same treatment and the same application in the field.
Moving to a field trial during the 2021-2022, farmers spread two tons of finely cut up cotton textiles, garments and emergency coveralls in a field that would be planted as usual four to five months later. Knox said test results from that phase revealed that with the first trial, organic carbon in the soil had increased to 1.08 percent from .77 percent, while sulphur jumped to 7.4 mg. per kg from 4.5 mg. per kg, indicating improved soil fertility and health. Scientists predicted that 2,250 kg of atmospheric CO2 would be mitigated through the breakdown of the garments in soil rather than in the landfill.
Covid interrupted field work at one point, and when a second farm in Gunnedah, New South Wales got on board, massive floods occurred in the region six to eight times over the course of six weeks.
The rains turned out to be a positive twist, soaking Australia’s normally dry soil, which has a high clay content. Attempts to spread the ground-up cotton created clumps that matted on top of the soil, proving to be a boon for water retention that would help mitigate the effects of possible drought down the road.
“It was almost like a protective layer that wasn’t incorporated,” Summers said. “The moisture stayed in the soil.”
It will likely be a number of years before the absolute results of the experiment have been determined and by then, it may have grown to include other natural fibers. Summers hopes it will promote the idea of circularity among consumers, and get them to use more natural fibers. Farmers are already on board and she believes the public will follow suit.
“Cotton consumers want it too and they are demanding environmental solutions as part of their purchasing decisions,” she said.
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