Session: DFMLC-04-04: Design for Large and Distributed Systems and Life Cycle

Paper Number: 143955

143955 - Prospective Life Cycle Assessment of Nonwoven Mat Manufacturing: Comparing Pre-Consumer Wood Waste Fibers to Post-Consumer Recycled Apparel Fibers 

The apparel industry’s substantial contribution to increasing
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) from discarded apparel through
fast fashion approaches necessitates exploring sustainable
alternatives. Over the past fifty years, throwing away textiles has
risen four times as fast as MSW generation rates in the U.S. This
study examines the environmental impact of an existing
nonwoven mat manufacturer that uses pre-consumer wood waste
to make fiber for nonwoven mats with a post-consumer recycled
apparel alternative. This alternative, the Fiber Shredder, a labscale
innovative mechanical textile recycling technology, takes
discarded apparel and turns it into valuable fiber. The recycled
cotton fiber produced by the Fiber Shredder from discarded
apparel is long enough to manufacture new nonwoven textiles.
The final products, nonwoven mats, are intended for landscaping
purposes and thus use biodegradable fibers. The novel
mechanical textile recycling technology to create fibers from
discarded apparel, the Fiber Shredder, developed at the
University of Minnesota Duluth, is scaled up theoretically to
compare its potential impact upon commercialization to an
existing industrial process that creates wood fibers from waste
wood. A prospective Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) compared
the environmental impacts of three options for manufacturing
nonwoven mats; (A) pre-consumer waste wood fibers, (B)
current lab scale post-consumer recycled cotton fibers from the
Fiber Shredder and (C) post-consumer recycled cotton fibers
from the scaled up Fiber Shredder. This LCA encompasses
emissions, energy usage, and materials from the acquisition of
raw materials through the production processes or cradle-to-gate.
The results show that although the lab-scale Fiber Shredder has
higher environmental impacts than the commercial nonwoven
manufacturer, scaling up the Fiber Shredder will lead to reduced
impacts. However, the scaled-up Fiber Shredder still needs
improvement in electricity consumption and speed of production
to be able to match the current commercially available
technology. The limitations of this study involve simplifying
assumptions such as neglecting packaging during shipping,
energy consumption for apparel sorting and notion removal, and
potential microplastics generation. In conclusion, transitioning to post-consumer apparel recycling holds promise but requires careful consideration of energy usage for scalability of the Fiber Shredder. This study underscores the importance of prospective LCA to optimize the design of emerging recycling technologies for sustainable production.

Presenting Author: Abigail R. Clarke-Sather University of Minnesota Duluth

Presenting Author Biography: Abigail Clarke-Sather is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) in the Mechanical & Industrial Engineering department. Dr. Clarke-Sather holds a B.A. in Physics from Earlham College, and a Graduate Sustainability Certificate, M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. She was a post-doctoral scholar and Visiting Young Scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Lanzhou. Dr. Clarke-Sather worked as a project manager at the International Center for Appropriate & Sustainable Technology (icastusa.org) collaborating on projects with utilities, government officials, non-profits, farmers, and students. Her research and teaching areas focus on computer aided design, materials science, sustainability, smart wearables, engineering for global development, life cycle assessment and textile recycling. Previously, she worked at the University of Delaware in the Civil & Environmental Engineering and Fashion & Apparel Studies departments. She has graduated six M.S. students who have worked on improving sustainability of bridge repair and inspection, textile recycling, and designing wearable stitched sensors for health monitoring. Dr. Clarke-Sather welcomes collaborations on real-world applications through her research lab, the Applied Sustainable Product Innovation and Resilient Engineering (ASPIRE) Lab (https://sites.google.com/a/d.umn.edu/abbie/).

Authors:

Hira Durrani University of Minnesota Duluth
Abigail R. Clarke-Sather University of Minnesota Duluth
Paulo H. T. F. Alves University of Minnesota Duluth