Recycling gets automation, forges ahead

Textile Recycler, a member of the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), the international trade association of the for-profit used clothing reuse and recycling industry, diverts more than half a million pounds of clothing and 10,000 pounds of shoes each week from landfills with the use of automated sorting systems. According to Jackie King, executive director for SMART, for more than 400 years, the used clothing and textile recycling industry has relied heavily on manual sorting and grading processes and has seen little to no technological advances since its inception. In 2009, Textile Recycler installed a patented auto grading system from Smart Innovations to eliminate the manual sorting of recycled clothing, increasing efficiency and productivity, and reducing labor costs. In 2014, Textile Recycler installed an automated shoe sorting system and is the only textile recycling company in the world to use one.

´Unlike others in our industry, with the use of automated conveyor systems to sort clothing and shoes, we are able to gather and measure a vast quantity of information from the items that we collect,´ says Munir Hussain, President of Textile Recycler.