The Trouble with Wearables

As all kinds of wearables continue to be brought to market—everything from rings and watches to smart clothing—I don’t know about you, but I love to geek out with these things. Smart pajamas? I’ll try those. Heart monitoring built into a shirt? Well, maybe I don’t need that yet, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Today’s wearables often integrate technology into textiles, allowing them to monitor health metrics, change color, or regulate body temperature. They’re being used in healthcare, sports, and fashion. “Smart” fabrics can also include conductive fibers for data transmission and energy harvesting capabilities. For more information about smart fabrics, visit here. But there’s a sustainability caveat to all this geekiness, especially when conductive and other materials are integrated into textiles. You can’t really recycle them when you’re done with them. But there are developments on the horizon that could change this. First, let’s understand the problem, and then we’ll dig into the potential solutions that are on the way.

Not as Sustainable As You Might Think

First, many e-textiles include small electronic devices. They are often embedded into apparel and technical textiles and serve a variety of purposes. This could include sensors, actuators, power sources, storage, and more. When e-textiles are discarded, their ultimate fate depends on the waste management process into which they are entered. And those vary massively, depending on location. For example, in the United States, every state, county, city, etc., has different waste management strategies. Materials like aluminum soda cans, paper, and many types of plastics are more likely to be handled appropriately than textiles. Not only are most textiles created from blended fiber types that can be difficult to separate, they may also contain conductive materials that, today, are virtually impossible to separate. Thus, they end up in the landfill, and will decompose—or not—based on the fiber and other content. According to Earth.org, some 192 million tons of textile waste is produced every year. The organization further states, “Of the 100 billion garments produced each year, 92 million tons end up in landfills. To put things in perspective, this means that the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second. If the trend continues, the number of fast fashion waste is expected to soar up to 134 million tons a year by the end of the decade.”

Is There a Solution in Sight?

Many universities and research institutions are conducting research on textile recycling and developing new technologies for separating and recovering valuable materials from textile waste. In addition, in the EU, research projects are being funded that focus on textile recycling, including the development of new technologies for separating and recovering valuable materials from textile waste. Organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are working to find ways to redesign the way clothes are made and used, for a more circular fashion economy. There is also some landfill diversion through organizations like SMART and SwagCycle. In the latter case, logo’d items that organizations no longer want or can’t use are donated to charitable organizations; those that can’t be donated for various reasons are ground up to be used in things like mattress pads, insulation, wiping cloths, etc. (SMART also uses this landfill diversion technique.) But depending on the content of e-textiles, grinding them up may not be an option, and most likely, donating them is not an option either. These are all good efforts, but they will take time; and time is something we really don’t have in terms of maintaining the health of our planet. I wanted to highlight one of the most promising efforts that looks to have the ability to scale quickly. This research is taking place at the ATLAS (Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society) Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, an interdisciplinary institute for radical creativity and invention that works to transform ingenious ideas into reality through research, experimentation, and critical thinking. The work is being conducted by Eldy Lazaro Vasquez, a Ph.D. candidate there, under the supervision of Michael Rivera.

  The goal of the project was to develop a smaller, desktop-sized machine that could be used to prototype spinning of fibers using bio-based materials. The idea was to use bio-based materials that could be dissolved using heat, thus separating out any conductive materials or electronics for recycling or reuse. Through studies with large manufacturers of commercial spinning equipment in Germany, Vasquez was able to design a desktop spinning machine that could spin these bio-based materials into fibers, which can then be woven to create fabric. Simple because of ease of use, the first bio-based material she used was gelatin—which obviously is not a long-term solution since it melts at low temperatures.  

The other important accomplishment was designing a machine that fits into the commercial spinning workflow. It can be used for testing bio-based materials in these manufacturing plants—and if that is successful, the material can be easily migrated to spinning on large commercial machines. The desktop version can also be used in schools, design studios, and other locations where education or research is underway. As the research has progressed, the ATLAS Institute received a grant from the National Science Foundation, and is working on new materials and machine modifications alongside growing a community around the research. Rivera said, “We’ve had several folks reach out from universities, museums, and textile studios around the world (Germany, Chile, Peru, the UK, and across the US) and start building the machine and experimenting with materials. Mostly recently, the Berlin Textile Co-op, finished the machine. All the files/instructions for the machines as well as details about joining our Discord community can be found on our open-source repository here: https://github.com/utilityresearchlab/desktop-biofibers-spinning.” Other solutions include using inkjet printing for e-textiles that are both sustainable and biodegradeable, as well as using graphene as the conductive material. The amount of graphene required for these applications is miniscule and should not present any recycling problems. Here’s an example out of the UK: graphene enhanced pajamas.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Projects like the one underway at the Atlas Institute are generating significant interest around the world, and the spinning machine should start to become available soon to various stakeholders. This is just one example of progress being made to solve this issue, while still letting us enjoy the benefits of e-textiles without contributing to the vast amount of textile waste the world is dealing with.    

About the Author Cary Sherburne writes for What They Think and other publications, and has written several feature articles for AATCC, especially concerning digital printing and new technologies.