Yearly we produce 110 million tons of textile waste, that is 13 kg per person globally. How can we motivate consumers to buy recycled goods and pay a higher price for these? But next to waste, we should look at how we wash our textile goods. Washing textiles is a major route for microplastics entering the environment. How can we motivate people to adopt measures that are less polluting? Two studies are going to find answers to these questions.
Recycling textiles
Textile recycling requires relatively pure waste streams. But most textile waste consists of blends of especially cotton and polyester. As a result most of this waste goes to landfill or is burned. Fortunately there are promising new techniques to recycle cotton even when mixed with polyester. But these techniques can only be successful when consumers embrace them and the products they bring to the market.
Social psychologists Frenk van Harreveld and Cameron Brick will study the willingness of consumers to buy textile products that are produced with recycled materials. They will identify psychological factors behind our intentions to recycle clothing waste, and our uptake of recycled textiles produced by new techniques.
