The burgeoning smart fabric industry could pose a serious e-waste hazard, according to a New York Times report.
Researchers have been weaving small electronic components into textiles, allowing the clothes to function as mobile phones, heart-rate monitors and other devices. The ElectroScience Laboratory at Ohio State University is building a cell phone vest. The designer clothing company Rainbow Winters sells pieces that emit light and change color. Scientists are even creating a fabric than can act as a power supply to run all these gadgets.
But few laboratories are considering the end of the products’ life cycle.
The first large-scale analysis of the issue was published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology in July. Authors Andreas Köhler and Conny Bakker of Technical University Delft in the Netherlands, and Lorenz Hilty of the University of Zürich, reported that e-textile recycling will be difficult because the valuable materials – including copper, gold and silver – will be dispersed in large amounts of heterogeneous material. The combination of electronics and fabrics pose a special problem, with the fabrics jamming e-waste equipment, and the electronics contaminating textile processing.