SusChem Sweden will pave the way for a sustainable chemical industry

Name: Erik Perzon

Age: 44 Function at IVL: Textile expert focusing on resource efficiency at IVL’s Gothenburg office Background: Ph.D. in Materials Science. Ten years of experience developing bio-based textile materials, textile recycling and system aspects of circularity in the textile and fashion industry.

TURNED INTO NEW RAW MATERIALS The textiles that come to the plant in Malmö are items that cannot be reused. This includes textile waste from industry, sheets and towels from healthcare and hotels, damaged garments and other sorted textiles that cannot be sold second-hand.

“The textiles that go into the machine are items that are currently viewed as pure waste, that are problematic and that entail a cost in order to get rid of them,” says Erik Perzon.

From these textile flows, the Siptex machine can create new, quality-assured recycling products that can be turned into raw materials in various recycling processes. Increasing environmental awareness in the fashion industry has raised the level of demand for recycled textiles, but it has been difficult for companies to get hold of raw materials of a sufficiently high quality.

“This has constituted a bottleneck – the recycling techniques exist, but the required flows have been absent. In order to recycle textiles on a larger scale, even quality levels and large volumes are required – exactly what automatic sorting can deliver. This is the link between collected textile waste and high-quality fibre-to-fibre recycling,” says Erik Perzon. The technology used in the Siptex plant is based on optical

ABOUT SIPTEX

Siptex stands for the Swedish innovation platform for textile sorting. This is a Vinnova-funded research project that is being led by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and implemented together with Swedish textile and fashion companies, research institutes and authorities, including H&M, Ikea, Kappahl, Stadium, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Re:newcell and Myrorna. The sorting plant in Malmö is owned and operated by Sysav (South Skåne Waste Company). sensors that, with the aid of near-infrared light, can sort textiles by colour and fibre composition with a high level of precision. In this way, large volumes of well-defined raw materials are obtained that meet the needs of the textile recyclers.

UNIQUE FACILITY When fully operational, the plant will have the capacity to sort 24,000 tonnes of textile per year, which corresponds to approximately 30 percent of the textiles discarded in Sweden over the same period. Siptex is the first plant of its kind, but Erik Perzon is hoping for more in future. These are needed in order to take advantage of the textile waste and make something good out of it.

Erik Perzon also highlights the environmental benefits of the fact that Sweden now has its own raw material production for the textile industry. “You could say that this plant is replacing a cotton field in Bangladesh or a polyester factory in China. It is not only a way of solving a waste problem, but also a way to replace new production, which is by far the biggest benefit from an environmental perspective,” he says.

IVL CONTRIBUTES TO THE GLOBAL GOALS BY:

• 8.4 Improving resource efficiency in consumption and production • 12.2 Sustainable management and use of natural resources • 12.4 Responsible management of chemicals and waste • 12.5 Significantly reducing the amount of waste