Cláudia Azevedo Lopes
Inovafil is participating in a European project led by H&M and Adidas that aims to produce new fibres from textile and farming waste. The secret, explains Rui Martins, Inovafil’s administrator, is to look at discarded clothing as a raw material, with multiple components.
The project, which is based on Infinitive Fibre, a type of yarn developed in partnership with the Finnish Infinited Fiber Company, aims to find a solution for the tons of discarded clothes that fill landfills all over the world. An environmental peril that led the Nordic countries to look for a way to extract cellulose, one of the raw materials used in fibre production, from textile waste. The results are viscose, lyocell, and modal fibres, among others.
“In percentage, cotton has more cellulose than a wooden log. So are we going to throw pulp in the trash and cut down trees to extract it? What we are doing is dissolving clothes, extracting the cellulose from them, and using it to make fibres again. This fibre is called Infinitive Fibre”, reveals Rui Martins.
The next step is farming waste – all the surplus that remains of the crops, which normally goes either to a landfill or to burn –, and that can also be dissolved to obtain cellulose.