SerpApi.Org
With more than 43 million pounds of donations last fiscal year, Goodwill Ontario Great Lakes faces a tremendous task in processing all those discarded goods. And while many of them can be resold, Goodwill estimates a quarter of the clothing it receives cannot.
Goodwill has a mandate to recycle and divert as much of that donation volume as possible from landfills, but the organization realized it needed help to do that. So they partnered with researchers at Western University and Fanshawe College, both located in London, Ontario, to explore solutions.
"We don't always have the resources or the expertise to look at alternative methods of sorting, so we rely on external partners like Western to help us with those opportunities," said John Quigley, manager of sustainability at Goodwill, Ontario Great Lakes. "Western is a cutting-edge university that has phenomenal resources, and working with its scholars allows us to explore new approaches for automation, advancing technology and improving process flows."
Western and Fanshawe researchers collaborated on a project that would transform clothing waste into materials that support plant growth, while Western also pursued a pilot using AI to help divert waste from landfills.
Western's Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources (ICFAR) worked with Jennifer Wright, a professor and researcher from Fanshawe's Fashion Design Program and Center for Research Innovation to use a thermal process called pyrolysis on clothing waste. The fabric is heated in the absence of oxygen and broken down into components such as biochar, a charcoal-like substance made primarily of porous carbon. When added to soil, biochar can help nutrient retention, support microorganisms and improve plant growth. The pyrolysis process works well for textile waste that is difficult to recycle using conventional methods due to fiber blends and additives.
"Through our research, we have developed a way to lock carbon into the soil instead of releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere," said Franco Berruti, founding director of ICFAR. "With so many countries, like Canada, putting a tax on CO2 emissions, trapping it has been both an environmental and an economic benefit."
The project also looked at natural fabrics such as cotton and hemp, which do break down on their own, but release emissions in the environment during that process. Researchers used enzymes to break those fibers down into sugars, creating a variety of potential uses, such as fermentation.
The project, which launched four years ago, has diverted more than 5,000 pounds of clothing waste from landfills, and as it scales, the researchers hope to be able to take on the full 25 percent of clothing that cannot be resold.
Along with this effort, Western University engineering professor Min Xia has been working with Goodwill to improve diversion rates and reduce waste going to landfills. Xia saw an opportunity to optimize Goodwill's hand-sorting process by using AI that uses smart cameras to scan and categorize donations as they pass on a conveyor belt. This will allow workers sorting clothing by hand to more accurately and efficiently choose which clothing goes to landfills and which goes to recycling or reuse.
"Cameras will help to identify the items, and if they miss them, the system will give the workers a signal to easily identify them," he said. "Then again at the end of the conveyor, there will be another camera to guarantee nothing ends up in the landfill that shouldn't."
Xia said the system was designed to support, rather than replace, employees since one of Goodwill's tenets is to help underemployed people find work. Currently, the system is in the research phase, but Xia's team has created video training for Goodwill employees with the goal of getting the system fully operational within the coming year.
"Organizations like Goodwill are doing a fantastic job of making a more sustainable society while also creating jobs," Xia said. "These kinds of collaborations help more people become involved in the circular economy and think about how they can reuse and recycle more sustainably."
