Production of Sustainable Yarn Incorporating Process Waste to Promote Sustainability

The spinning industry makes a major contribution to environmental pollution due to the excessive use of natural assets and the generation of remarkable amounts of waste during manufacturing processes. Now, the spinning industries are concentrating on sustainable activities due to environmental issues. While textile recycling efforts have been widely explored, the utilization of soft waste (process waste) in yarn production remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by investigating a sustainable approach incorporating soft waste into producing sustainable yarn using the ring-spinning technique. The research explores the properties of yarns manufactured from a blend of virgin cotton and soft waste, and 100% virgin cotton yarn is produced for comparison. The results indicate that incorporating soft waste leads to an increase in CVm% (13 vs. 11), hairiness (6.9 vs. 5.1), and IPI (165 vs. 125) compared to virgin cotton yarn. However, the elongation percentage (7.1% vs. 8%) and tensile strength (12.6 cN/tex vs. 16.2 cN/tex) showed a reduction, highlighting potential trade-offs in mechanical properties. The statistical analysis applies one-way ANOVA to evaluate the significance of variations in yarn characteristics made from the mixture of soft waste + virgin cotton and only virgin cotton. The manufactured yarns were examined in a modern weaving machine as weft yarn for fabric (denim) manufacturing and found to be perfect for normal operation. The article focuses on reducing negative impacts on the fabric (denim) manufacturing environment by incorporating soft waste to produce sustainable yarn. This research provides important insights into the production of sustainable yarns, focusing on environmental concerns.