Material Properties of Used Textiles and Their Reuse Potential in American Industries

Abstract

Discarded used textiles pose a threat to the environment and have negative economic impacts. Recycling used textiles into viable products have positive environmental and economic impacts. Quantitative literature is limited on assessing these impacts of recycled post-consumer used textiles. Little is known about material composition of the post-consumer textile waste stream, as most thrift stores sort used textiles for viable product streams but not by material composition. This research reported the material composition of post-consumer used textile bales from two thrift store chains and a hybrid EIO-LCA model was developed to assess the environmental and economic impacts for different industries by replacing new inputs with used textiles. Experiments were also conducted to determine tensile strength and permittivity of discarded textiles by material types and the data was compared to material property specifications for woven geotextiles for assessing the reuse potential of used textiles by material types.