Читать книгу Plastics and the Ocean - Группа авторов - Страница 34

A significant tonnage of plastic resin is used to spin textile fibers (73.5 MMT in 2019) but three plastics dominate the application. In 2020, of the total textile fiber market (including natural fiber) was >52% polyester, 5% Nylon, and 6% rayon fiber (Textile Exchange 2020). Unlike in the early days of the industry, the recent trend of fast‐changing fashions, results in a very short service life, often less than a season, for comfort fabric. Clothing today provides physiological as well as psychological well‐being to the consumer and needs to be easily laundered. Post‐consumer clothing can in theory be recycled, but, only about 15% of all textile is globally recycled at present despite the benefits of the strategy in terms of savings in embodied energy and reduced externalities. Recycling textiles, however, introduces a serious complication. The process generates microfibers from mechanical fragmentation, that are difficult to contain and are released to the environment with waste water.