A fabric that incorporates conductive yarns, thermochromic inks and drive electronics.
The growing practice of weaving electronics into the fiber of clothing could add to the already monumental challenge of e-waste disposal. Some fifty million tons of electronic waste already accumulate annually in “soaring mountains” of refuse, the United Nations says.
As a Science Times article on wired textilesrecently noted, electronic or “smart” textiles have electronics in the very weave of their fabric, enabling clothing to respond in various ways to the environment and to function as electronic devices, like mobile phones or heart-rate monitors.
“Backyard recyclers” burn discards to extract trace materials in Ghana.
With their social and commercial promise, e-textiles, also known as smart textiles, are the focus of intense laboratory development and testing. Few laboratories, however, have designed prototypes with an eye toward safe disposal once the products have reached the end of their life cycle.
A recent study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology undertook the first analysis of the implications of e-textile manufacture on a large scale. “I wanted to conduct a basic disposal assessment,” Andreas Köhler, the article’s lead author, said in an interview.
He said he wondered what would happen if electronic components that include copper, gold, silver and other rare earth metals ended up in the waste stream as part of textiles.
Interviewing designers, engineers and policy makers about e-textile disposal, Mr. Köhler found that those involved in the field readily agreed to the importance of the question but were not looking for answers themselves.
“Everybody says: ‘Oh yes! That’s interesting. We should think about that. But, you know, we’re not responsible,’” he said.
I reached out to others by e-mail to pose the same question. Asked about approaches to e-textile recycling, John Volakis, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State University who is designing a wearable antenna, said, “I have no idea, not my expertise at all.”
Asked about the potential recycling of AT&T’s “bio-tracking clothes,” a company spokeswoman, Dawn Benton, wrote, “At this point in time we don’t have a comment or insight on this topic.”
A mass consumer market for e-textiles without an integrated understanding of safe disposal methods raises serious questions about the depletion of resources and effects on human human health, Mr. Köhler suggests, especially for vulnerable populations in developing countries where such clothing is sent or dumped.
Many e-textiles use silver-coated yarn for its conductivity value. Because of the relative scarcity of silver, Mr. Köhler estimates that demand for an e-textile product on the mass market could eventually require 12 percent of the global silver supply.
The metal’s low concentration in e-textiles and the widespread dispersal of products among consumers could make recovery and recycling prohibitively expensive in Europe or the United States, raising the likelihood that e-textiles would join the broad stream of e-waste flowing to dump sites in developing countries.
While the economic incentive does not exist for developed countries to recover metals in low concentrations, the monetary returns prove worthwhile in many developing ones.
As a result, a profusion of informal e-waste salvage sites have sprung up where laborers, often children, burn electronic components to recover trace amounts of valuable metals. This process exposes workers to highly toxic fumes.
Often the workers use hazardous materials like acid and mercury to extract gold from discarded electronics.
Although exports of e-waste from the United States are illegal, some 50 to 80 percent of “recycled” electronics are in fact shipped from developed to developing countries, according to the Basel Action Network, a nongovernmental organization that works to prevent toxic trade.
In the six years that he has studied e-waste, Mr. Köhler said, the proliferation of personal electronic devices and their rapid rate of turnover have only abetted “a very nasty business.”
The obsolescence of e-textiles may only accelerate as manufacturers and marketers respond to both rapid technological change and seasonal fashion.
Recent research from the United Nations University on so-called “backyard recycling” at a dump site in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, found potent lead and cadmium contamination in a nearby school and marketplace. Workers at the dump were as young as 6 years old.
Mr. Köhler argues that disposal solutions should be sought now, when e-textile development is in its early stages. That will require coordinated design and policy measures that focus on the product’s end-of-life.
One basic suggestion is designing e-textiles with as few toxic materials as possible and with ease of disassembly in mind. Currently, appropriate recycling technology does not exist. When e-textiles are sent to electronics recyclers, the fabrics jam shredders; when they are sent to fabric recyclers, the interwoven electronics contaminate fiber reprocessing.
Meanwhile, he warned, there is the impact overseas “The kids of Agbogbloshie won’t run out of waste to burn,” he said.
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