Researchers from the School of Arts, Design and Architecture and the School of Chemical Technology at Helsinki’s Aalto University have won the top H&M Global Change Award for a recycling technique that converts waste-cotton into new textiles.
The conversion of the existing ‘Ioncell-F process’ to enable the recycling of waste-cotton into new textiles was awarded as one of five winners from 2,700 proposals.
Population growth and improved standards of living across the globe have resulted in a growth in the demand for textile fibres of more than three per cent per year, but increases in cotton production are restricted by land area available for farming and the amount of water required for irrigation. Manufacturing viscose, on the other hand, requires toxic chemicals.
Aalto University’s solution is something they’ve dubbed the Ioncell-F process – an environmentally friendly technology for dissolving waste-cotton into an ionic fluid (liquid salt) developed at the University of Helsinki. Dry-jet wet spinning, a method in which thin fibres are created by forcing the solution through spinnerets, is used to produce new textile fibres from the solution.
Sixta and his team have spent years refining the method – it has previously been used to make textile fibres from Finnish birch cellulose and recycled cardboard, but now it has been proved that Ioncell-F also works with waste cotton.
“It is this possibility to utilise other materials in addition to cellulose that makes our method different from other similar methods,” Sixta explains. “Thanks to the ionic solvent developed at the University of Helsinki, the process is not sensitive to impurities, which is why it is suitable for treating recycled materials,” he says.
The resulting fibres are comparable to high quality virgin cotton fibres. “It is an extremely inspiring material for a designer,” says Pirjo Kääriäinen, designer in residence at Aalto University. “The properties of the fibre are equal to other cellulose fibres, but from the point of view of sustainable development, this is a far better alternative than, for example, organic cotton.”
The high tensile strength of the resulting fibres means they can be used, not only for fabric, but also as light structured composite materials for applications in the automotive and aircraft industries.
The Global Change Award, worth €1,000,000 in total, was initiated by Spanish fashion brand H&M’s Conscious Foundation in 2015 to champion sustainable and innovative ideas for the protection and re-use of natural resources. The grant was split between Ioncell-F and four other finalists, selected from 2,700 proposals from 112 countries. Other winners proposed using algae to make renewable textiles, a marketplace for industrial up-cycling of spill in production, using microbes to recycle waste polyester textile and creating new textile out of citrus juice production by-products.
“It is a great honour and a huge source of motivation for our entire team,” says Herbert Sixta, Professor of the Department of Forest Products Technology at Aalto University, who received the award from Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden.
The Ioncell-F research team will invest their €300,000 grant in the continuation of the research on the Ioncell-F process. All five finalists also get access to a unique one-year innovation accelerator provided by the H&M Conscious Foundation, Accenture and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
The team behind the project includes Professor Herbert Sixta and his team from Aalto University School of Chemical Technology, Michael Hummel, Anne Michud, Shirin Asaadi; Pirjo Kääriäinen and Marjaana Tanttu from Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture; Professors Ilkka Kilpeläinen and Alistair King and PhD student Arno Parviainen from the University of Helsinki and Professor Ali Harlin from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd – the process is a joint development of Aalto University and the University of Helsinki supported by VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, who developed the pre-treatment process for the use of post-consumer cotton.
Kääriäinen is keen to highlight the importance of such a cross-disciplinary team: “The technology has been developed by top experts in materials science and chemistry, but making prototypes, in other words turning fibres into thread and further into textiles as well as presenting ideas to stakeholder groups requires design and textile design professionals,’ he says.
Sixta is keen to extend the collaboration. “Textile manufacturing is a truly multidisciplinary business,” he says. “It requires real expertise in chemistry, business, engineering science as well as design. We want to involve all schools of Aalto University in this.”
However it may be some time before we see clothes made using this process available in the shops. “At the moment we can only manage laboratory-scale production of good-quality fibre,” says Sixta. “The method must be scaled up next. It is challenging as manufacturing industry has been fading in Finland in the past few decades, which means that some of the expertise has also disappeared – and now we have to build it up again. Making the recycling of ionic solvent efficient is also a big challenge.” The grant, relationships with Marimekko, IKEA and H&M and innovation training provided by H&M Conscious Foundation, Accenture and KTH to the five finalists will all help to achieve that goal.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- Look Like Love launches talent search for new designers
- Andrea Ponti launches side table inspired by Hong Kong street signs
- confessions of a design geek raises £1,750 in new charity partnership
- Max Lamb slices up 187-year-old tree to make 130 functional objects
With thanks to Eeva Suorlahti for the photography.
