Every second, a garbage truck dedicated exclusively to textile waste would pass by on a planetary highway used to transport global waste to a gigantic landfill, totaling ninety-two million tons per year. While we typically focus on recycling plastics, glass, or organic waste, the textile industry contributes to 8% of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, only 1% of the clothing produced worldwide each year is recycled. Is there a technological breakthrough that can change this situation?
The main challenge in achieving more efficient recycling lies in the collection of garments and the difficulty of sorting them based on their different materials. Fortunately, butterflies, particularly their wings, demonstrate how to optimize this process through biomimetics, which involves applying principles or structures found in nature. Just as chaos theory suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can cause a storm in New York, perhaps the wings of butterflies hold the key to revolutionizing how we consume and recycle our clothes.
The structural color out of wings
Separating textiles usually requires manual inspection, which can be challenging due to the loss of labels or the need for chemical analysis. MIT in the United States has turned to the colorful wings of butterflies to create a kind of barcode that could be integrated into every item of clothing, simplifying the process. The color in butterfly wings is not from pigments but nanostructures reflecting light with different wavelengths, known as “structural color.”
A new type of fiber is being developed by MIT that is initially invisible to the eye but reveals a specific footprint when exposed to infrared light. This allows these fibers to be scanned and separated based on the material of each garment at recycling plants.
Smart (and recyclable) garments
At MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, future fabrics are being developed to create intelligent or functional garments with additional capabilities beyond traditional clothing. By integrating electronic components and manufacturing innovative fibers, the goal is to reduce the ecological footprint of clothing. The project involves creating fibers that correspond to each textile type, such as cotton or wool, to facilitate recycling and contribute to a more sustainable textile industry.
Other technologies inspired by butterfly wings
The intricate complexity of butterfly wings has inspired various technologies beyond smart garments and textile barcodes, such as more efficient solar panels, radiant metamaterials for cooling buildings, wind turbine blades, wave energy harvesters, biosensors, and photocatalytic systems. The biomimetic applications of butterfly wings continue to offer innovative solutions in various fields.
If you’re interested in learning more about biomimetics, you can explore energy efficiency systems and construction materials inspired by the exoskeleton of beetles. Additionally, there is more information available on smart clothing technologies.
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