About 200 cars made it to the drive-through ‘Give a Sheet’ textile recycling event last Sunday and it’s hoped many more make it to future annual events, as the growing amount of clothing and textiles ending up in Noosa landfill is a growing waste problem.
Emma from Noosa Council said Australia had become the second highest consumer of textiles in the world after the US with people on average now wearing an item of clothing only seven times before throwing it away. She said Noosa landfill was seeing “much more” clothing and textiles weekly.
In an attempt to reduce landfill Council teamed up with Logan-based clean-tech company BlockTexx which recycles textiles through its chemical and manufacturing process and collects good quality used clothing for The Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul to recycle and create funds through their Op shops.
BlockTexx co-founder Graham Ross said the company had developed a process to separate polystyrene and cotton from textiles to create two usable products which they can on-sell to be recycled into a wide variety of goods.
Graham said the recycled cotton was sold as a slurry or powdered form and could be used for items such as table tops, playground equipment and carry bags. Polyester pellets they produce could be reused in production of paint, concrete, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, he said.
Graham said the Australia-first company had diverted 4000 tons of textiles from landfill in its first year of production and aimed to increase that to 10,000 to 12,000 tons.
He said Australians dumped 800,000 tons of textiles and clothing into landfill each year without considering the consequences.
“People care about a coke bottle but not about their favourite tee-shirt and it’s the same thing,” he said.
Noosa was the second Council to partner with BlockTexx, following Ku-ring-Gai (northern Sydney) Council a couple of weeks ago.
