New Composites: Diversifying material sources in a circular textile economy

The fashion and textile industries are significant contributors to pollution, resource depletion, and climate change. To steer human activity back within the limits of the earth's carrying capacity, the way we produce, use, and dispose of textiles needs to undergo radical transformation. This work is embedded in principles of sustainability such as reducing negative social and environmental impacts at each stage of a product or material's lifecycle, alongside circularity as a leading approach to sustainability, which endeavours to circulate resources without waste. The New Composites project aims to increase the diversity of resources used in textile design as a contribution to sustainability targets while embedding recyclability in textile design.

The industry currently relies in overwhelming majority on two types of fibres, cotton and polyester, which together account for 76% of all global textile production (Textile Exchange, 2021). While improvements can be made in these fibre categories by using organic or recycled input, it is imperative that a wider variety of fibres should complement their use. The current focus on such a narrow range of resources leads to a lack of resilience in the sector as current price spikes or major disruptions caused by conflict or other obstructions of trade routes have shown. The project tackles the environmental and social impacts linked to the reduced biodiversity which comes from a focus on conventional fibres.

Exciting and diverse innovation is currently taking place in the sector of alternative materials, for example materials made from pre- and post-consumer recycled fibres, bio-polyesters from corn, or regenerated cellulose from agricultural waste. However, these innovations are often not fully transparent in their composition and are difficult to access at scale. Moreover, as current guidelines for circular design focus on the fibres with the highest market share, little is known about how these new fibres are best employed in products designed for recirculation.

The New Composites project aims to increase understanding of the circularity potential of these new fibres to encourage fibre diversity across the industry. The challenges that it tackles are: first, the lack of information on composition, production processes and recyclability criteria for alternative materials, second, the access barriers for these materials in terms of cost and performance. The first objective is to gather and cross-reference information from material providers and recyclers so that it is accessible as guidelines for designers who intend to use these materials. This builds on existing research in this area by the project team. The second objective will be achieved by blending alternative fibres with other sustainable yet more accessible resources. The realisation of this second objective will take the form of a series of prototype textile samples in collaboration with UK-based production and design companies that shows the application of new materials in blends designed for circularity.

The outcomes of the research will be a set of guidelines with associated physical demonstrators to highlight the possibilities of designing with alternative materials for circularity. The guidelines will show ways in which these materials can be combined in compatible blends which respect the criteria of existing and emerging recycling technology, and how design for disassembly can be employed when non-compatible resources are combined. It is hoped that these outcomes will enable an increased uptake of new materials and a shift away from polluting and mono-culture resources.