5 reasons Sustainability / Recycled Cotton for T-shirts, and hoodies

Sustainability continues to be at the forefront of product decisions, branding initiatives and strategic planning in the textile industry.

The use of recycled materials, including recycled cotton, is an issue of growing interest in sustainability.

Recycled cotton is not a new concept for the CFB textile  factory and apparel market, but as manufacturers, brands and retailers continue to assess their footprint in the supply chain, interest in sustainability recycled cotton T-shirts and clothes has grown.

What is recycled cotton for T-shirts and clothes ?

Recycled cotton can usually be defined as cotton conversion into cotton fiber, and a new cotton recycled T-shirt ,  which can be reused on textile products.

1. First the fabrics and materials are separated by colors .
2. After sorting, the fabrics are fed through a machine that grinds the fabric into yarn and then into raw fiber.
3. This process is tough and puts a lot of pressure on the fiber. It is rare for the fibers to break and become entangled when crushed.
4. The raw fiber is then res pun for reuse in other products. The quality of the recycled fiber will never have quality values ​​that match those of the original fiber.In particular, fiber length and length uniformity are affected, limiting end-use application.

Benefits and Challenges of Recycled Cotton covert in T shirts

1. Fibers Benefits Recycled cotton can find new life in a wide variety of low-value products such as insulation, rags and upholstery.
2. The recycling process allows many products to be diverted from landfills. According to the Textile Recycling Council, annual textile waste is estimated at 25 billion pounds. The amount of energy, water and color is reduced by using an already processed product.
3. Savings are achieved by compensating the production of new materials. Because recycled cotton yarns typically come from color-sorted pre-consumer textile waste, the yarns are already dyed. Savings in CO2 emissions and fossil fuels can be partially offset by using existing materials.
4. However, collecting, processing and shipping cotton waste or clothing items can reduce or offset some of these savings. Challenges Cotton must be blended with other fibers to be made into new yarn for strength and durability, and as such cannot be continuously recycled. The percentage of recycled cotton depends on the end use. Any amount of recycled product impacts yarn and fabric properties such as evenness, strength and uniformity.
5. The cost of recycled yarn is generally higher than the cost of standard virgin cotton yarn and could potentially be prohibitive. The testers are made for virgin ginned cotton. . Sometimes test results can be biased due to differences in packing and fiber orientation.
6. The risk of contamination from other fibers is much higher with recycled cotton. Stitches, sewing thread and small amounts of spandex must be considered when building the recycling supply chain.

Producing or buying recycled cotton T-shirts have an impact positive?

Using recycled cotton fibers drastically reduces the environmental impact of cotton garments and is an essential strategy to achieve the ambitious climate targets that the industry has set for 2030.

Using recycled cotton what you saving :

Water

CFB  has saved up to 26.5 million m³ of water in 2020 using recycled cotton for our production line

Growing organic cotton consumes huge amounts of water. The diversion of water courses for the irrigation of cotton fields has promoted episodes of drought in several areas of the planet.

CO2 emissions

CFB has saved up to 40.499 tons of CO2 emissions in 2020

The textile industry is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases on the planet due to the widespread use of synthetics derived from petroleum.

CFB has saved up to 99.470 MWh of energy in 2020

The estimated energy savings for an annual production of 1,776 tons of dyed fiber using textile waste is 99,470 MWh.