Content of polyester in separately collected waste textiles: a pre-investigation from Vienna

Apparel and home textiles are one of the oldest and most important product categories in human history. Today, textiles are also being discussed in the context of the circular economy. However, in order to promote circular economy solutions for textiles such as reuse and particularly material recycling, it is necessary to determine the composition of textiles. This article provides a pilot analysis of the composition of separately collected textiles in Vienna. The focus is on apparel and home textiles, and here again on the most important fibre materials for these, namely cotton and polyester. In total, 220 kg of separately collected textiles, acquired from the public waste operator of Vienna, MA 48, were analysed based on the fibre material content and composition information found at the labels of the textiles.The results show that the waste textiles consisted mainly of textiles, and to a small extend of shoes and other products. The most important material of textiles was cotton, which was found in quantities three times higher than polyester. Since a large fraction of textiles did not contain labels, it was assumed for the calculation of the total composition of the sampled quantity that the fibre materials used for textiles with label is equivalent to these without label. Under this assumption, the separately collected material consisted of 40% of predominantly cotton-based fibre, 21% complex textiles of more than two fibre materials, 16% shoes and other no-textiles such as leather products, 12% predominantly polyester-based fibre, and 11% other textiles. These figures are in contrast to international production numbers of textiles, were polyester is more than two times more relevant than polyester.The results show that there is a large potential in waste textiles not only for reuse, but also for recycling in case that reuse is not feasible. This particularly counts for cotton. However, more waste textile sampling campaigns as the one carried out in this study should be conducted, considering also other waste streams that contain waste textiles, such as mixed municipal solid wastes from households, but also covering more areas in Vienna and Austria. Furthermore, the analysis has to go more into detail. Based on these data, manual, mechanical, and chemical treatment processes of textiles for their reuse und recycling can be designed.