IoT for durable and long lasting textiles and apparel

Background & introduction

Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment. In 2020, about 18.6 million tons of clothing .up in landfill. Clothing is hard to recycle due to its complex nature of materials; it also takes nearly 200 years to decompose in a landfill, during which it releases harmful greenhouse gases.

Thus, designing garments for durability and longevity, as well as using sustainable materials is critical to minimize clothing ending up in landfills.

One of the ways to design durable textiles is the use of IoT from durable yarn selection to digital care labels to provide the customer with manufacturing transparency.

What are the key sustainability benefits?

Use of IoT enables designers to choose durable textile yarns while also creating personalised or customised products, leading to greater product longevity, as the consumer is likely to wear these products for a longer period of time.

They also provide guidance to consumers through QR codes and care labels, through which consumers would know how to care for the garments in terms of washing and maintenance as well as whether to reuse or recycle them.

The above practices would significantly reduce the emissions caused due to conventional textile design and maintenance practices.

How does this work?

A unique digital ID is created for a product, which acts as an interface for brands, customers and textile collectors as well as textile recycling companies. Brands can utilise the laser-engraved or woven QR code to provide the customer with manufacturing transparency, as well as gain insights into the use of their products, while textile collectors and sorters receive valuable information to decide whether to reuse or recycle a product and recyclers can find out about all the components and fabric composition to enable efficient textile-to-textile recycling.