Recycling– an Approach towards Sustainability

Abstract

Recycling and up-cycling are two popular buzz-words in today’s society and is a large component of the environmental movement to reduce ecological damage. Recycling refers to those products that are used till they are considered waste and then used again to make similar or different kinds of products. Textile recycling is the method of reusing or reprocessing of used fabrics, fibrous materials, natural renewable resources and clothing scraps. Recycled textiles are generally used in low quality end use thereby downgrading the standards of ultimate products. In India, clothing plays an important role in deciding one’s status since historic period. In today’s world, people wear branded clothes to show their fashion sense and financial position in the society. Fashion is considered to be one of the fastest brand industries on the planet and approximately 80 billion new pieces of clothing are being sold every year throughout the world, which is around 400% more than the production of 40 years ago. Fashion employ more than 300 million people worldwide and clothing production has doubled during the last fifteen year. In order to produce 1 kg of fabric 23 kg of green house gases are emitted. Textile industry generates more CO2 and half of the cloth present in the wardrobe may never been worn in a year. Fashion is now considered as the second most polluting industry and increasing middle classes in developing world for making their own fashion statement, the situation is getting worse. A huge amount of water, manpower, electricity is needed to produce raw materials and that same amount or more is used to produce the final products. As estimated, the total clothing sales will reach 175 million tons by 2050, which will turn the planet into biggest fashion victim. Thus this industry is facing challenges on sustainability. In this context, the aim of this paper is to show upcycling of textiles in the era of fast fashion. Most of the people is not familiar to the term up-cycling and have the misconception that up-cycled materials are made from second hand products and are not as good as branded clothes. This may be true to a certain extent but to preserve our mother earth it is very essential to think in this approach of recycling and/or up-cycling in the coming years. The objective is to create innovative designs from the activity of recycling. The products are made from used clothes, whereas dyeing and printing of apparels is done by using the waste materials of nature. Bark and dry flowers of trees is used for dyeing; whereas dry leaves are used for Botanical prints on old fabrics. Old sarees are used for making new apparel. The use of recycle materials will reduce the pressure on virgin resources; develop value added creative textiles, provide job opportunities among the surrounding communities, reduce the ecological damage and make people aware of using recycled textiles.