The Role of Water Recycling in Building a Circular Economy in the Textile Industry

Abstract

The lifestyle of modern society is deeply connected to massive industrialization and the production of goods. One of the trends of the modern age is fast fashion. For the last decades, customers of fashion concerns have been used to buying new clothing every single season. But, we must reconsider the motivation of buying a brand new pair of blue jeans and start to bother that producing every pair of jeans needs between 7000 and 10,000 L of fresh water? Textile production is one of the most water-consuming industrial branches, which undoubtedly poses an environmental threat. This chapter describes the most relevant issues related to textile wastewater problems. The most serious critical points were stressed by discussing the consumption of water at each level of textile goods production and the most serious sources of environmental pollution during textiles production. At the same time, this chapter provides the most beneficial circular economy solutions for textile wastewater reuse, such as heat recovery or the use of greywater for hygiene purposes. But the main and most promising path was found to be wastewater recycling and closing the water loop during the textile production processes. By giving not only the data from the literature but also practical industrial examples, the authors showed effective methods for textile wastewater treatment in the service of recycling. The technical issues and economics of these treatments concluded their applicability. Finally, the chapter includes the topic of minimal water parameters that need to be kept for recycling and the system for ensuring the proper final quality of textiles.