Recycled Clothes and Textiles - What Happens to Them

One product they end up as are cleaning rags and wipers, made from recycled clothing and textiles they are an environmentally friendly alternative to disposable paper towels, and are not going to fall apart at the slightest sign of water and can be reused time and time again.

Textiles are sorted and the clothes that can be reused are sent for export. Those that can not be reused due to blemishes or rips are baled together according to garment and grade, and sent to recycling centers to be turned into wipers. In addition to this, textiles are also sourced from commercial laundries that dispose of bed sheets, pillow cases, and tablecloths, when their life is exhausted these make the best lint free wipers for the automotive cleaning industry.

The manufacturing (or recycling) process for all wipers is exactly the same. The textiles are firstly sorted to ensure that they are clean, dry and suitable as a wiper - this basically means that they are cotton rich and therefore absorbent. They are then graded together and sent to a cutting facility where they run along a conveyor belt to be cut into a specified size, dependent upon garment. This produces a wiper of a uniform dimension, which is free from zips, buttons and any other encumbrance.

Specially-built machines are used to ensure clean cut wipers, and once made each wiper is passed through a metal detector for final quality control prior to packaging.

Due to the diverse nature of wiping cloths there are a few points to keep in mind when choosing your supplier:
Industrial wipers are sometimes regarded as a 'waste or bi-product' and not all wiper companies take the same time and effort ensure that their grading and quality is of a high standard.

An increasing number of companies simply export clothes for sorting and cutting in Eastern Europe and then import them back into the UK. The environmental footprint of all this haulage is massive. Find a company that does all there sorting and cutting in the country they are destined for reduces the need for long haulage whilst also employing local people.

Industrial wipers offer a valuable means of recycling thousands of tonnes of unwanted clothing and textiles. This must be a better solution to simply throwing away more than 1 million tonnes of textiles into landfill sites. Due to the high carbon footprint associated with the manufacture of cotton based materials - they will conform with and enhance your organisations' eco-friendly policies.