Have you ever actually recycled a pair of pants or an old T-shirt? You might be able to soon. Lots of clothing is made from cotton and polyester fibers interwoven so closely that it’s impossible to separate them without destroying the cotton. In this episode, George tests a newly discovered technique that could solve that problem, potentially changing the way we use and get rid of our clothes.
Sources:
- Recycled Cotton | CottonWorks™
- Enzymatic textile fiber separation for sustainable waste processing - ScienceDirect
- Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made | Science Advances
- Ab Initio Thermochemistry of Highly Flexible Molecules for Thermal Decomposition Analysis | Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
- Denim Recycling Program | Madewell
- Chemical Structure of Cotton Fibre – Online Textile Academy
- Transacylation from Acid Amides to Amines Catalyzed by Carbon Dioxide | Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan
- The Carbon Dioxide-Catalyzed Ester Exchange Reaction | Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan
- Carbon Dioxide-Catalyzed Stereoselective Cyanation Reaction | ACS Catalysis
- CO2-Promoted Reactions: An Emerging Concept for the Synthesis of Fine Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals | ACS Catalysis
- CO2-catalyzed/promoted transformation of organic functional groups - ScienceDirect
- Recycling of waste PET into useful textile auxiliaries - ScienceDirect
- Hydrolysis of waste polyethylene terephthalate catalyzed by easily recyclable terephthalic acid - ScienceDirect
- A CO2-Catalyzed Transamidation Reaction | The Journal of Organic Chemistry
- Catalytic Fabric Recycling: Glycolysis of Blended PET with Carbon Dioxide and Ammonia | ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering