Taiwan may not have participated directly in the recently concluded FIFA World Cup, but it can nevertheless be said to have played an indispensable role in the tournament, since nine of the 32 participating teams wore uniforms using a special type of fabric made in Taiwan out of recycled plastic bottles.
The uniforms showed the world how far Taiwan has progressed in its recycling technology, and how innovative its textile manufacturing skills have become.
More specifically, they were a testimonial to the success of a number of textile companies based in Taiwan, which have dedicated more than a decade to developing innovative technologies for producing high-quality fabrics from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.
In July, one of these companies, Super Textile Corp., received the world’s first recycled material certification ever issued by the TUV Rheinland Group, a Germany-based global firm that provides technical assessments and services. The German firm testified that the products made by Super Textile are lightweight, quick drying and fabricated completely using recycled materials, exactly as its manufacturer claims.
Alex Lo, managing director of Super Textile, said fabrics produced from recycled bottles are similar but not identical to regular polyester fabrics. The fibers, instead of being derived directly from petroleum byproducts, are extracted from recycled PET bottles, a much more environmentally friendly way of doing things, he said.
“The production process begins with collecting used bottles,” Lo explained. “Then the bottles have to be cleaned and color sorted before being processed into flaky scraps and eventually yarn.”
According to Lo, currently only the plastic bottle itself can be reused in fabric manufacturing, meaning that bottle caps and labels have to be removed in advance. “The extra processing required makes the ‘green’ polyester products roughly 30 percent more expensive than ordinary polyester,” he said. “But almost every type of polyester fabric that you find on the market today can be made from recycled bottles.”
On average, a sports jersey, as worn by the World Cup players, uses eight recycled plastic bottles. According to statistics from the Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, over 13 million recycled PET bottles were used to produce this year’s World Cup jerseys for teams and retailers.
In addition to sports jerseys, the company produces many other textile products, the most notable of which are the blankets made for the Buddhist relief organization Tzu Chi. Since 2006, Tzu Chi has distributed more than 1 million Super Textile blankets, each measuring 230 cm by 180 cm, to numerous disaster zones around the world. And as 78 recycled bottles are required to make one blanket, over the years 78 million waste plastic bottles have been turned into “pure gold,” Lo said.
Lo added that the light green blankets were made without dyes from green PET bottles. “This helped cut out a few steps in the production process and helped reduce carbon emissions.”
When the right technology is used, Lo said, recycled polyester fabrics have numerous tiny pores that make them superior to traditionally made counterparts when it comes to weight and moisture evaporation.
This year, Lo’s research and development team made a breakthrough when it created its first ever batch of buttons from recycled PET bottles. This means that his company can now theoretically make a garment entirely out of recycled materials, Lo said.
Lo’s team is also working on technologies in extracting fibers from bottle caps, a recycled component which has yet to be used in textiles but “has great potential to become another recycled material for fabrics, since its specific weight is lighter than PET and water,” Lo said.
While Lo’s company continues to maximize the use of recycled PET bottles, another Taiwanese business, Singtex Technical Fabric, has been exploring the possibility of incorporating other types of recycled materials into its fabrics.
"The manufacturing process of recycled PET fabrics already reduces the carbon footprint by an estimated 75 percent compared with conventional processes, but we want to further cut down our carbon emissions to help protect the environment,” Jason Chen, general manager of Singtex, said. “We would also like to enhance some of the positives we already find in our PET fabrics, such as fast drying, odor control and UV-protection.”
One innovative product to come out of Singtex has been its “S. Cafe” coffee yarns. These yarns, made up of 98.5 percent recycled PET bottles and 1.5 percent ground coffee beans, are the result of more than four years of research and experimentation, Chen said.
When looked at under a microscope, coffee beans are found to have many pores, Chen explained. These pores increase greatly in number after the beans have been roasted, a characteristic that when blended into the fabric helps “accelerate the moisture transportation process and provide better elimination properties” than other PET materials.
“This type of clothing can be worn for two or three days so that people can do their laundry less often and spend less time drying it. All this helps to further reduce our carbon footprint,” he said.
According to Chen, manufacturing a sports shirt on average consumes 21 grams of waste coffee grounds, roughly the amount used to brew three cups of coffee. Considering that more than 100 million people drink coffee on a daily basis, the low cost of coffee grounds makes them the perfect material for making fabrics.
Chen’s employees have been collecting discarded coffee grounds from convenience stores and coffee retailer chains on their way to work every day. His company now produces nearly 20,000 kilograms of “coffee yarns” monthly out of 500 kilograms of coffee grounds brought by employees and donated by beverage companies.
Its coffee yarns helped Singtex win the 2010 Taiwan Excellence Award, a government-sponsored prize whose purpose is to promote and encourage innovative designs and high-quality local products. Singtex’s honor is all the more remarkable because it is the only textile manufacturer to win the coveted prize this year: Most other winners were in the information and communications technology industry.
Nearly 50 major international brands of sports and outdoor goods such as Nike, New Balance, REI, Patagonia and L.L. Bean now carry Singtex’s innovative products in their sales.
This year the company is taking things to the next level by adding marble to its fabrics. Marble can help keep clothes cool while at the same time preserving all the great qualities of coffee yarns, he said.
Looking ahead, Super Textile’s Lo said he believes garments made from recycled materials will eventually gain popularity as petroleum resources become scarcer and the cost of production comes down.
Singtex’s Chen is also optimistic about the future prospects for his textiles. “Considering the numerous benefits recycled fabric products can offer, the somewhat higher cost should be a small price for consumers to pay,” he said.
Write to Audrey Wang at audrey@mail.gio.gov.tw