Sorting researches of waste textile material

Turku University of Applied Sciences produced two-step sorting researches for Remeo. In the research, they studied the distribution of thousand kilograms of material collected during spring and autumn (2018). Different textiles were identified by the care labels and divided to their own sections. The unidentified textiles and multi-layer textiles were also separated to their own groups. The non-textile material and materials without recycling instructions were removed and the rest were measured to find the biggest and the smallest pieces. After the separation all the identified textiles were moved to infrared identification to ensure the results.

About one third of the textile were left unidentified on both sorting experiments. To get the unidentified material recycled responsible in the future also there is a need for a new robot identification technology. The recycled material was not counted in the sorting researches.