The real impact of composting over landfill
Composting cotton textile waste by returning it to the soil is emerging as an alternative to sending cotton textiles to landfill, but how much better for the environment is this process and what effect will it have on emissions?
To fully understand this, a new circularity project is bringing together a multi-disciplinary research team from across science and business to investigate the level and impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in ‘return to soil’ options compared to landfill, and to test methods for composting textile waste for their commercial viability.
The team from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New England will look at the relationships between inputs, outputs, processes and GHG emissions from the various recycling (return to soil) options. GHG emissions from textile waste in landfill will be used as the benchmark and compared with alternative uses involving the processing and composting of textile waste for use in soils.
The team will also evaluate the commercial viability of these alternative methods of recycling and composting, examining effective ways to close the loop on cotton fibre waste alongside the development of commercialisation strategies that can add value to the Australian cotton industry.
Critical to the analysis will be the integration of economic analysis, helping to identify the likelihood and value of each option to the industry.
“We have a very multifaceted set of objectives and that’s why we have such a multi-disciplinary approach to this research,” says Chris Bajada from UTS.
“Importantly, we’ll also be engaging with cotton growers and industry participants in the current and emerging circular economy.
“Grower input is vital as we want to deliver relevant information back to growers to help them to make decisions about returning cotton ‘waste’ to their farms.
“The analysis of commercial viability and relative GHG emission savings (compared to the landfill benchmark) from the different methods of waste processing will provide effective alternatives that will contribute to the circular economy for cotton.”
As the Australian cotton industry seeks to provide concrete evidence to customers of positive impacts and action to mitigate climate change, this research will be able to be used to showcase the sustainability credentials of cotton production systems.
Then there’s the economics. There’s a long list of promising recycling initiatives that have gone by the wayside in recent years as the issue of waste grows. In Australia, REDcycle – best known for working with supermarket chains for soft plastics recycling – went into liquidation this year, and the charity sector incurs a cost of $13 million per year to transport and sort unsaleable product into landfill.
The project clearly recognises that any potential solutions must be economically viable.
“We’ve seen a lot of businesses in the recycling industry go under, and methods, while they may work, may become unviable because the numbers just don’t stack up,” UTS project lead Paul Brown says.
Paul has put out a call to the cotton community.
“If after reading this story anyone would like to know more or to collaborate with our team, we encourage them to contact us,” Paul said.
For more
Paul Brown and Chris Bajada, UTS
This article appears courtesy of the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC). It was published in the (Summer 2023/24) edition of CRDC’s Spotlight magazine: www.crdc.com.au/spotlight