The Afterlife of Clothes

Abstract: The clothes and textiles sold in Sweden is mostly manufactured in countries outside of the EU. The production requires large areas of land and vast amount of water. The environmental impact is big during the production phase in terms of water usage, chemicals and transports. In general, the consumption of new textile is increasing in Sweden, but so is also reused textil. In 2016 the consumption of textile in Sweden was nearly 14 kg per person and year, which equals the weight of 14 t-shirts, 5 pairs of jeans, 7 hoodies and 2 coats. At the same time 5 kg textile per person and year is thrown in the the household waste and nearly 60 % of the thrown textile is in good condition and could be used again. The amount of clothes given to charity organisations is almost 4 kg per person and year but 70 % of the collected textile is exported. The collection and recycling of non-reusable textiles in Sweden today is low. Current recycling techniques are mainly energy recovery through incineration. The reasons for this has to do with limitations in the sorting and collection of consumer textile waste or limitation of optional recycling processes. In fact, there is no large scale industrial process to recycle textile into new textile, which leads to an open loop system where input of new materials is required. But there are upcoming technologies that meets the challenges today. This project explores the dynamics of current ways of treating textile waste. Through learnings from existing system, in combination with new technologies, alternative ways of structuring processes of production, consumption, usages and disposal is proposed with the aim of establishing a new relationship to contemporary urban production.