Recycled fibrous and nonfibrous biomass for value-added textile and nontextile applications

Abstract

Waste is a substance that is considered by all as unwanted or additional material arising out of any industrial or agricultural operation process, product, by-product, or any other item at the end of their requisite service life. In a country such as the United Kingdom, about 4–5 % of municipal solid waste is composed of clothes/textiles, 25 % of which is recycled. A large amount of unutilised/processed material is generated in the agricultural, food processing, paper–pulp, and textile industries as waste or residue, such as lignin, sericin, dyes, sizing paste, leather fibre, banana pseudostem sap, cellulosic and ligno-cellulosic short to long biofibres, corncob, tomato seed and peel, and many others. The disposal of such waste or residue creates serious environmental pollution, either during their natural degradation, through the microbial pathway, or through incineration. As many of the agro, food, textile, and paper–pulp processing wastes or residues have high technical potential to be used for many diversified end-applications, they have been seriously considered through R&D efforts and application for the production of nanocellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, bacterial cellulose, recovery of dyes, water purification, biodegradable hard and flexible composites, substrates for tissue engineering, recycled textiles, UV protective and antimicrobial agents, binder and biodegradable pots for transplanting of plants, and so on. Life-cycle assessment has also been explored to analyse the environmental performances of different shopping bags.