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JFW Sustainability
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Recycled materials
/upcycling materials

What is < Recycling > ?

Recycling indicates a cycle of ‘making, using, collecting and remaking’. Recycling of fibre materials, mainly refers to synthetic fibres, in widespread use, generating microplastic waste in bulk and causing environmental problems.

◉ The three main categories for recycling of synthetic fibres are:

● Chemical recycling: Turning waste back into constituent raw materials by chemical processing.

● Material recycling: Recycling from one material to the other. Plastic bottles are a good example, whereby raw material is obtained from waste to create new products.

● Thermal recycling: Recovering heat and electricity from waste to recycle it as an energy source and turning it into fuel by incinerating it alongside other combustible waste.

Recycling of plastic bottles,
with a constructed system
(Material recycling)

Recycling centres on establishing a recovery system. Since waste containers, plastic bottles and packaging have to be collected, sorted and recycled by law, the relevant recycling technology is well established. The raw material used for these plastic bottles is PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which is also found in polyester fibres. Therefore, it is possible to make polyester fibres using raw materials from collected plastic bottles.

 Recycle PET

Recycling of natural fibres …
recycled wool, cotton and linen

This refers to the system which involves collecting cutting waste in sewing factories, discarded products, or cotton waste and scrap generated when wool or cotton is spun or woven. The next step involves reusing fibres that are returned to floss or reused as wool after processing with opening cards and garnet machines. These are normally reused as spun woollen yarns and felted fabrics for wool and work gloves or wadding for cotton, due to its shorter fibre length after processing.

Recently, multipurpose usage has emerged, such as recycling, reusing and upcycling, starting by constructing a system to collect disused articles.