Improving textile waste biodegradation through fungal inoculation

Textile waste currently contributes about 780,000 tonnes of waste to landfill in Australia alone. Within landfill, biodegradable textiles take multiple years to decompose and most synthetic textiles are effectively not biodegradable. Blends of these fiber types are currently too costly to separate and recycle. Decomposition depends on the presence of suitable microorganisms already present in the landfill. This study aimed to investigate which fungi could best be used to pre-inoculate textile waste entering landfill (to reduce volume) or in a composting system (to recover non-biodegradable materials for re-use). Ten textiles were inoculated with 14 fungi well known for their degradative ability and incubated at 25–30°C for 1–2 months. Greatest weight losses (100 %) were achieved by Chaetomium globosum (Ascomycota), Trametes versicolor and Ganoderma species (Basidiomycota). In textiles with mixtures of cellulose with polyester or elastane, only the cellulose fibers were degraded and the other fiber types were left available for recycling. These results suggest that pre-inoculation with the most effective fungi could increase the rate of decay in cellulosic portions of textiles discarded into landfill, at the least reducing textile volumes quickly. Alternatively, aerobic fermentation of textile waste could recover non-biodegradable synthetic fibers for re-processing and re-use in a low-cost and environmentally benign manner, reducing the need for its manufacture de novo from petroleum derivatives. • 78 million tonnes of textile waste is discarded into scarce landfills each year. • Only 1 % is recycled because current chemical and physical methods are uneconomic. • The problem is the cost of separating biodegradable and non-biodegradable fibres. • Inoculation with selected fungi could digest biodegradable fibres without this cost. • This would be a cheap, non-polluting way to clean up synthetic fibres for recycling.