A research team from the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center at Aarhus University in Denmark have developed a method for separating elastane to enable recycling.
Issues around the separation of nylon and elastane yarns have being proving problematic for the textile recycling industry for many years. In products such as sportswear and women’s hosiery, for example, nylon fibre is often wrapped around an elastane core during the yarn preparation stage, and as such is virtually impossible to separate back into the respective fibres for recycling.