Recycling Pre-Consumer Textile Waste Using Water Soluble Film Technology for Promoting Environmental Sustainability

Environment sustainability is need of an hour. Hazardous waste should be managed properly otherwise it may cause harm to people and environment both. The objectives of the 3R Reduce, Reuse and Recycle referred to as the waste hierarchy are to cut down the amount of waste thrown in the landfills thereby conserving natural resources, landfill space and consequently energy. Of these the final R, Recycling is a key component in the process of converting waste into useful products. Garment production in India exists in both organized and unorganized sector. There is a large clutter of industry, street side tailors, and boutique owners which generate bags of fabric waste which eventually land in the landfill. This waste is not recycled in any supply chain. Since it is a pre- consumer waste, they are bright and virgin in nature. The present study is an effort to create sustainable fashion using pre-consumer textile waste and further aims to sensitize business houses and NGOs towards an eco-friendly and user friendly technology which has social as well as commercial implications. In this study textile waste was collected, segregated, assessed and then converted into a fabric using water soluble fabric technology. Water soluble film is non-toxic and can be dissolved at room temperature. The fabric designed out of this technology was further used for designing a product range. This technology is then shared with enterprises at all levels who are struggling to reduce their ecological foot prints. This study has been conducted under a project supported by Delhi University Innovation Project Scheme.