The fashion industry’s significant contribution to waste and pollution has intensified the urgency for clothing recycling. Until recently, even basic tasks like separating shoe soles remained manual processes. In southwest France, CETIA, a pioneering company, is now leading the charge with groundbreaking mechanical solutions for clothing recycling.
CETIA’s dedicated research team has unveiled a game-changing machine that employs artificial intelligence to scan garments, identifying and isolating hard elements like zippers and buttons, and employing a precision laser to remove them. Additionally, they’ve designed a machine with a robust mechanical arm capable of swiftly detaching shoe soles.
In a world of space exploration and medical breakthroughs, these innovations may seem elementary, but they represent significant progress.
Chloe Salmon Legagneur, Director of CETIA, explained, «It was a chicken and egg question. No one was recycling soles because we couldn’t separate them from the shoe, and no one was separating them because there was no recycling.»
Previously, recyclers resorted to laborious processes, involving hours of baking shoes to melt the glue and manually removing soles.
While only about one percent of textiles in Europe currently go back into new clothing, most are repurposed for housing insulation, padding, or road asphalt. This is due to the intricate composition of clothing, demanding meticulous separation to preserve fiber quality for recycling into new garments.
CETIA’s AI-laser machine is set to revolutionize this process, significantly accelerating textile recycling. The technology is continually evolving and improving. CETIA also boasts machines capable of sorting clothes by color and composition at a rate of one item per second.
These innovations have been spurred by upcoming stringent European regulations, requiring clothing companies to incorporate a specified proportion of recycled fibers in their products. Major retailers like Decathlon and Zalando are backing CETIA as they seek large-scale solutions.
Additionally, political incentives are at play. The French government envisions new employment opportunities in manufacturing, facilitated by recycling technology capable of addressing the 200,000 tonnes of textile waste shipped abroad annually.
CETIA’s primary focus is on preparing textiles for reuse, with other companies handling the melting and transformation of separated soles into new ones. This marks a pivotal initial step.
Veronique Allaire-Spitzer of Refashion, a waste management coordinator, emphasized, «As long as we do not have systems to prepare materials for recycling, we will not have a recycling sector in France.»
Refashion has invested 900,000 euros in CETIA, with a matching contribution from the regional government.
In the words of Legagneur, «None of this is a magic idea. It’s just common sense. But it’s about aligning engineers, financing, and companies in need of these solutions. It’s only now that these elements are coming together. A decade ago, this seemed like a distant dream.»