Recycled Cotton Fibers for Melange Yarn Manufacturing

The textile industry delivers two types of wastes during production, namely hard waste and soft waste. These are used as a raw material in Blow Room mixing with virgin cotton with limited volume. Besides, the sector also releases a large amount of used garment/cloth and remnants (solid waste), which causes landfill and pollution. Recycling of used clothes and remnants was started in the late 1980s to reduce such an impact on the environment. Recycling also helps to reduce raw material costs in mélange yarn manufacturing. The used clothes, as well as the garment wastes, are collected and supplied to the factories. Before the processing, they are sorted depending on their color and fabric type. These fabrics are converted into fibers called “reclaimed/regenerated fibers” by a serious of machines, i.e., cleaning, cutting, conditioning, shoddying/tearing, and baling. The reclaimed fibers are mixed with virgin cotton in preset volume according to the desired end product. Mainly mixing/blending in factories is practical at Blow Room and Draw Frame. Sometimes it is done at Speed Frame. The conventional spinning types of machinery with different settings are used to process reclaimed fibers. But there are also supplementary processes. In this chapter, the fiber preparation methods, mixing types, spinning are discussed. Also, the advantages, disadvantages, and application areas of mélange yarn are discussed.