Science And Technology Business Opportunities: Turning Waste Clothes Into Energy, Handling 2000 Tons Of Clothes Every Year

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Recycler jeplan, a Japanese company, is committed to extracting cotton fiber from waste clothing and converting it into energy.

According to jeplan, a ton of waste clothing can produce about 700 liters of ethanol, which can save land and water resources. The company has also developed a method to recycle polyester. And many of these compounds are incorporated into the fabric to reduce the cost of crease resistance. According to jeplan, polyester is used in about 60% of clothing manufactured annually worldwide and can be a valuable resource if it is broken down and reused in new clothing.

Recycling plastics, paper and metals is common, but most of the clothing produced each year around the world ends up in landfills and incinerators. "Only 10% of the clothing is recycled, including second-hand sales, in every country," said Masaki Takao, jeplan's co-founder and CEO.

Takao and his team are developing a technology to extract polyester from clothing through multiple distillation and evaporation cycles. Compared with remanufacturing these materials, the process produces only half as much carbon dioxide as the former. However, the difficult part is that the extracted polyester needs to be of high purity. "No one is doing this because it's very difficult," Takao said

Waste clothes are put into machines at jeplan's factory near Hiroshima

In 2007, Takao, a graduate student, and michihiko Iwamoto, a textile salesman, founded jeplan. The company cooperates with Osaka University to develop "cotton recycling" technology. In 2010, jeplan began commercial operations to provide recycling advisory services to Mitsubishi and NTT DoCoMo. Since its inception, jeplan has raised about $13 million, with investors including DoCoMo and JAFCO, a venture capital firm.

The program needs a factory. The company is building a plant on the southern island of Kyushu, which is expected to open this summer and handle 2000 tons of clothing a year.