2020 Edition

About 400 tons of old clothes are sorted daily at the German headquarters of Soex, one of the biggest textile recycling companies worldwide. The majority of the old clothes are sold as second-hand items (around 60-70%), however the proportion of non-reusable clothes is steadily growing due to declining textile quality. Many textiles contain mixtures of different fibers, therefore they cannot be turned into homogenous materials anymore. The consequence is tons of hard to recycle composites made from plastic and natural fibers, which are downcycled as filling materials or incinerated.
The product designers Laura Jungmann, Martha Schwindling, Elena Tezak and Jonathan Radetz would like to use these resources and create a closed recycling loop by processing old textiles into high-quality products.

The Textile Hanger is designed as a presentation hanger in the retail trade and, in the sense of a circular product cycle, can be shredded again into fibers following its wear and tear and can be used to manufacture new hangers or other products.

A new production process developed and patented by a German engineering company is used by the designers: Any kind of fiber –from textile threads and shredded plastic bottles to natural fibers like wool, hemp or wood– can be mixed with a thermoplastic bonding fiber and blown into a mold, where it gets heated and pressed into the final 3D shape.
This process can be used to upcycle industrial scraps or waste and to replace energy-intensive and toxic PU foam processing. Besides the environmental advantages it is also highly efficient in the use of raw material and it doesn’t require pre-products in the shape of mats or blocks. All leftover fibers can be reused, and already pressed forms can be torn again and reused for the process. The production method further allows for complex variations of density and shape in a single part.