- Byproducts and post-consumer cotton waste
- Sorting by types and colors
- Stripping
- Carding, Combing, Spinning
- Recycled Cotton Yarn
- Weaving, Knitting
- Recycled Cotton Fabrics
Cotton can be recycled from pre-consumer (post-industrial) and post-consumer cotton waste. Pre-consumer waste comes from any excess material produced during the production of yarn, fabrics and textile products. Post-consumer waste comes from discarded textile products, e.g. used apparel and home textiles. During the recycling process, the cotton waste is first sorted by type and color and then processed through stripping machines that break the yarns and fabric into smaller pieces before pulling them apart into fiber.
The resulting staple fiber is shorter than the original fiber length, meaning it is more difficult to spin. Recycled cotton is therefore often blended with virgin cotton fibers to improve yarn strengths. Commonly, not more than 30% recycled cotton content is used in the finished yarn or fabric.
Because waste cotton is often already dyed, re-dyeing may not be necessary. Cotton is an extremely resource-intense crop in terms of water, pesticides and insecticides. This means that using recycled cotton can lead to significant savings of natural resources and reduce pollution from agriculture. Recycling one ton of cotton can save 765 cubic meters (202,000 US gal) of water.
