A textile company has started a program to recycle textiles…
A textile company has started a program to recycle textiles so they are not added to a nearby landfill as part of the waste stream. The company collects old T-shirts, sorts them by color, breaks down the fibers, and respins the fibers into yarn, which is used to make new shirts. The recycling process is different from traditional manufacturing because it does not use dyes and it reduces the amount of water used in the manufacturing process to make new shirts. (a) One drawback of traditional textile manufacturing is that it can release dyes into nearby rivers. (i) Identify an ecosystem service provided by rivers. (ii) Assuming the dyes are dark in color, describe how photosynthetic algae living in the water would be affected by the release of dyes into rivers. (iii) Textile dyes often contain heavy metals such as lead, chromium, and cadmium. Describe how heavy metals in nearby rivers could affect predators at the top of the food chain. (b) In 1950, 1,710 tons of textile waste were sent to a landfill. In 2015, 10,530 tons of textile waste were sent to the same landfill. Calculate the percent change in textile waste sent to the landfill between 1950 and 2015. Show your work. (c) The company has recycled 875,000 cotton T-shirts in the new recycling program. Assuming that a T-shirt has an average mass of 140 g, calculate the mass (in kg) of waste that was diverted from the landfill by recycling the T-shirts instead of throwing them away. Show your work. (d) Traditional manufacturing processes use an average of 700 gallons of water to manufacture one new T-shirt. Using their unique recycling process, the company uses only 5 gallons of water to manufacture one recycled T-shirt. The company received an order for 950 recycled T-shirts. Calculate the number of gallons of water that would be saved by making 950 recycled T-shirts instead of the same number of traditionally manufactured T-shirts. Show your work. (e) In addition to being recycled, another sustainable solution would be to reuse the shirts. Propose a specific, realistic example of how a T-shirt could be reused as a solution to reducing the number of shirts that are disposed of in a landfill.
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