CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] The present invention claims priority to pending U.S. Provisional Patent

Application No. 62/595,151 filed December 6, 2017.

TECHNICAL FIELD

[0002] The present invention is generally directed to a method of recycling textile material, such as clothing and other fabrics, and an article of clothing made from the recycled textile material.

BACKGROUND ART

[0003] There is a significant amount of post-consumer textile waste (PCTW) in the form of used textile material, such as waste from the textile and clothing industry (TCI), that is discarded each year. Much of this discarded textile material ends up in landfill or in incinerators. A small percentage is either resold as used clothing or sent as humanitarian aid to countries with populations that do not have the means to purchase clothing. The lack of formal and strategic structure towards the handling of PCTW leads to the majority of disposed consumer textiles being incinerated or exported for commercial use in developing countries, with questionable impacts.

[0004] A very small percentage of the discarded clothing is put into a recovery process to recover useful fibers. These recovered fibers are most often used without discrimination in fiber content for purposes other than as a source of recycled fiber. Recovered fibers are often used, essentially as an inert filler, in applications such as shoddy for carpet underlayment, sound insulation, furniture batting and the like. [0005] There has been a long-felt desire to reform recovered fibers into textile material, such as clothing and other fabrics, however, the cost is prohibitive. There are several problems that arise from trying to recover fiber from used clothing. Among those problems is the necessity to sort the clothing so that each piece of old clothing is grouped together with others made of the same fiber type and count as these will process similarly in machines designed to open fabrics and separate them back into fibers. To recover and create more value from the amounts of PCTW, other recovery processes need to be considered as additions to the traditional second hand retailing.

[0006] A transition towards more sustainable resource use in the TCI through the implementation of closed-loop recycling (CLR) is being considered. Closed-loop recycling is a recycling process through which a manufactured good is recycled back into itself or a similar product without significant degradation or waste. Using recycled materials in the form of fabric, yam, fiber, polymer or monomer comes with several challenges regarding collection of garments, sorting, or distribution. Availability of recycled material is one major challenge for the production process, since only the minority of garments is recycled.

Secondly, blending of materials makes it nearly impossible to successfully sort garments into homogeneous materials.

[0007] Another problem is associated with the non-fabric components of clothing such as zippers, buttons, stitches and the like which must be removed prior to recycling. It is known to remove buttons and zippers by tearing machines designed to tear fabric apart thereby losing the buttons and zippers that may be present in a used garment. However, the buttons and zippers become damaged and are not usable and the buttons and zippers, especially metal ones, damage the metal pins or wires in the tearing machine creating wear and tear and more frequent maintenance or replacement of critical machine elements. Furthermore, the metal on metal contact may cause a spark that can lead to a fire in the machine. [0008] Manual approaches have been employed wherein laborers manually cut the zippers and buttons away prior to feeding the clothing into the tearing machine. This is a labor intensive process, has high labor cost, and renders this process as economically undesirable method for recovering fiber from used clothing.

[0009] There is an ongoing desire in the art for a system for recycling textile material, such as clothing, which creates value, is cost-effective, and allows for fibers to be reused multiple times thereby mitigating the amount of virgin fiber usage. Reverse value chain strategies for making use of PCTW as a resource, consisting of collection strategies as well as recovery processes such as sorting, cleaning and mending or reuse of the material, are desirable.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION

[0010] One embodiment is a method for recycling fiber from textile material by performing the steps of: forming textile material from fibers; distributing the textile material to a closed group of users wherein the users comprise a common attribute to define homogeneous textile material; collecting the homogeneous textile material wherein the homogeneous textile material comprises used fibers; recovering the used fibers from the homogeneous textile material to generate recovered fibers; and reforming the textile material using the recovered fibers.

[0011] Another embodiment is an article of clothing made by the process above, wherein the article of clothing further comprises sacrificial sewing thread that is capable of being eliminated from the clothing by a method selected from the group consisting of dissolution, melting, sublimation, photo-degradation, tandem catalytic cross alkane metathesis, biodegradation and combinations thereof.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0012] Figure 1 illustrates one embodiment of process steps for recycling fiber from textile material, some steps being optional.

MODES FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

[0013] Fibers are defined herein as any substance, natural or manufactured, with a high length-to- width ratio and with suitable characteristics for being processed into fabric in which the smallest component is hair-like in nature and can be separated from a fabric. Natural fibers are those that are in a fiber form as they grow or develop and come from animal, plant, or mineral sources. Manufactured fibers are made from chemical compounds produced in manufacturing facilities.

[0014] Yarns are defined herein as an assemblage of fibers that are twisted or laid together so as to form a continuous strand that can be made into textile fabric. A yarn is a continuous strand of textile fibers, filaments, or materials in a form suitable for knitting, weaving, or otherwise intertwining to form a textile fabric. Filament yarns are made from manufactured fibers, except for a small percentage that is filament silk. Manufactured filament yarns are made by extruding a polymer solution through a spinneret, solidifying it in fiber form, and then bringing the individual filaments together with or without a twist. Spun yarns are continuous strands of staple fibers held together by some mechanism such as a mechanical twist that uses fiber irregularities and natural cohesiveness to bind the fibers together into one yarn. Sewing thread is defined herein as a yam intended for stitching materials together using machine or hand processes.

[0015] Fabric is defined herein as a flexible planar substance constructed from solutions, fibers, yarns, or fabrics, in any combination. A fabric is a pliable, plane-like structure that can be made into two- or three-dimensional products that require some shaping and flexibility. Fabrics can be made from a wide variety of starting materials: solutions, fibers, yarns and “composite” fabrics. Composite fabrics are fabrics that combine several primary and/or secondary structures, at least one of which is a recognized textile structure, into a single structure. Some fabrics are made directly from fibers or fiber forming solutions and there is no processing of fibers into a yarn. These nonwoven structures include all textile-sheet structures made from fibrous webs, bonded by mechanical entanglement of the fibers or by the use of added resins, thermal fusion, or formation of chemical complexes.

[0016] Embodiments of the present invention are generally directed to a method of recycling textile material, such as clothing and other fabrics, and an article of clothing that comprise fibers, yams, sewing thread, fabrics, non-woven materials, and all products made from fibrous materials. The products made from fibrous materials include apparel, home, technical, automotive, medical, aerospace, consumer products and other such products.

[0017] Motivating consumers through making them identify with the recycling of a product is crucial for a functioning collection system. This can be achieved through referring to a consumer group specific attribute, such as hobby or profession, that uses at least one homogeneous textile material. Implementing CLR is also a way of reducing the input of virgin material and thereby the dependency on material imports. Due to the minimized quality and durability of recycled materials, blending with virgin material is often done.

[0018] Additionally, zippers, buttons, and the like, make garment recycling complicated as the removal of such details calls for manual assistance, making the process both costly and time consuming. Sacrificial thread can solve this problem by supplying a thread that is simply eliminated. When sacrificial thread is used for regular seams, the whole piece of clothing can easily be disassembled so that the fabric can be used over and over in new ways, cutting the need to produce fabric from scratch.

[0019] FIG. 1 illustrates process steps of an exemplary embodiment for recycling fiber from textile material, with some steps being optional: 100 Form textile material from fibers; 102 Distribute the textile material to a closed group of users wherein the users comprise a common attribute to define homogeneous textile material; 104 Collect the homogeneous textile material wherein the homogeneous textile material comprises used fibers; 106 Remove non-fabric elements from the homogeneous textile material; 108 Eliminate sacrificial sewing thread from the homogeneous textile material; 110 Recover the used fibers from the homogeneous textile material to generate recovered fibers; 112 Reform textile material using the recovered fibers.

[0020] The homogeneous textile material can be a obtained from heterogeneous garments having components of homogeneous textile material. For example, heterogeneous garments may have common homogeneous textile material in the sleeves, collars, back panels, legs, etc. that are suitable for this method of recycling.

[0021] The closed group of users can possess an attribute that defines mutually similar homogeneous textile material suitable for collecting and recycling together. For example, textile materials of similar/identical color and composition can be an attribute suitable for this method of recycling. Additionally, the closed group of users can be selected from the group consisting of employees of the same company, members of the same sports league, members of the same sports team, and combinations thereof.

[0022] The method for recycling fiber from textile material can be applied to textile material selected from the group consisting of yams, sewing threads, fabrics, nonwoven materials, products manufactured from fibrous materials, and combinations thereof. The method can also remove non-fabric elements prior to recovering the used fibers by eliminating a sacrificial sewing thread from the homogeneous textile material. The sacrificial sewing thread can be comprised of a material that is dissimilar from the fabric or the non fabric elements of the textile material. The dissimilarity allows the method of eliminating the sacrificial thread to act differentially on the sacrificial thread than the remainder of the textile material.

[0023] Eliminating the sacrificial sewing thread can be done by dissolution, melting, sublimation, photo-degradation such as exposure to ETV or IR light, tandem catalytic cross alkane metathesis, biodegradation and combinations thereof, by using a medium such as a gas, a liquid and combinations thereof. The medium can be a static medium, a flowing medium and combinations thereof, and can be an active medium and/or a passive medium [0024] An article of clothing made by the recycling process described above can have sacrificial sewing thread that attaches non-fabric elements to the article of clothing, as well as attach dissimilar discrete panels of homogeneous textile material to each other.

[0025] The sacrificial sewing thread can be made from polyvinyl alcohol, acrylic, polyester, cotton, nylon and combinations thereof. The polyvinyl alcohol can be stabilized. The acrylic can be made to lower the dissolving point of the sacrificial sewing thread below the dissolving point of the homogeneous textile material.

[0026] Sacrificial sewing thread made from cotton can be dissolved away from a polyester textile material. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), also referred to as PES

(polyesters), can be separated from cotton in order to be eliminated by either: 1) dissolving the cotton and maintaining the PET, 2) degrading the cotton and maintaining the PET, 3) maintaining the cotton and dissolving the PET, or 4) maintaining the cotton and degrading the PET.

[0027] The polyester sacrificial sewing thread can also be made from modified polymers configured to lower the melting point of the sacrificial sewing thread below the melting point of the homogeneous textile material, wherein the melting point of the sacrificial thread is in the range of about 160 to 395 degrees Fahrenheit. While still being strong enough for stitching and/or embroidery thread, the sacrificial sewing thread can melt at temperatures generated by a heat gun or the like. Heat soluble and/or water soluble thread made by Ravi Thread Works, or, for example, Resortecs heat soluble stitching, are all suitable materials for the sacrificial sewing thread.

[0028] Another embodiment of the invention can be an article of clothing wherein the fibers for forming the textile material consist of only the sacrificial sewing thread, thereby enabling the entire clothing article fabric to be eliminated and leaving only the non-fabric elements behind.

[0029] The invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiments without limit thereto. Additional embodiments and improvements may be realized which are not specifically set forth herein but which are within the scope of the invention as more specifically set forth in the claims appended hereto.