An Overview on the Development of Natural Renewable Materials for Textile Applications

Abstract

With the aim of giving a synopsis of the development of natural renewable textile materials, this article first looks at the classification of textile materials and identifies the natural renewable materials that exist in the textile world. It explores different application domains of wearable and non-wearable textiles and their sources, and briefly discusses the processing technologies of different natural textile materials. Plant based textiles are predominantly cellulosic in nature while, animal based ones are based on protein chemistry. Only fibre that comes from minerals is known as asbestos, which is banned in many countries due to the health hazard it can cause. A subgroup within the manufactured fibres is natural polymers, which are regenerated from natural resources. They can be considered as “semi-natural” fibres and are also briefly touched in this article as some of the innovations of achieving novel renewable textile materials are heading towards this direction. A comparison of properties of the natural fibres was made using the Ashby charts to give some guidance on its applicability as textile materials. A Product Life Cycle (PLC) analysis of the natural fibres was also discussed and the current developments and future trends in the applications of natural fibres in real life are presented.