Textile waste and education for sustainability: a Brazilian literature review

Abstract

In Brazil, the way to dispose textiles waste is not widely available, and they aren’t considered a waste category such as metal, plastics, glass, and paper. Hence, tons of materials are send directly to landfills and open-air dumps. Additionally, the recycling possibilities requires specialized knowledge. The country has three main policies to administrate the environmental problems: National environmental policy (1981); National Solid Waste Policy (2010); National environmental education policy (1999). All of them have a point of convergence on reducing, not generating, reusing and recycling materials. The growing cost to the environment, land, air and water pollution, and to government to dispose, must call attention of the researchers to study and advocate for changes and to raise awareness. Studiers must put a great effort into to collaborate with redesigning and to produce less textiles waste. Following this discussion, this paper is a bibliographical survey in CAPES and SUCUPIRA’s databases (Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education), after querying with the keywords related to textile waste generation and education. Comprising the period 2017-2021, the study focuses on scientific documents – master and doctor dissertations – written in Portuguese language. The objective in doing a review of literature was to evaluate it according to the guiding concepts of education, sustainability and textile waste generation. This methodological alternative to conduct this research, and technical procedures, revising scientific information, focused on 13 articles. It is concluded that the bibliographic review articles, related to education and textile waste generation are not emphasized in academic production. Therefore, significant findings in literature could empowered academic public for changing attitude and stimulate new researches.