Although recovery of fibers from used textiles with retained material quality is desired, separation of individual components from polymer blends used in today's complex textile materials is currently not available at viable scale. Biotechnology could provide a solution to this pressing problem by enabling selective depolymerization of recyclable fibers of natural and synthetic origin, to isolate constituents or even recover monomers. We compiled experimental data for biocatalytic polymer degradation with a focus on synthetic polymers with hydrolysable links and calculated conversion rates to explore this path The analysis emphasizes that we urgently need major research efforts: beyond cellulose‐based fibers, biotechnological‐assisted depolymerization of plastics so far only works for polyethylene terephthalate, with degradation of a few other relevant synthetic polymer chains being reported. In contrast, by analyzing market data and emerging trends for synthetic fibers in the textile industry, in combination with numbers from used garment collection and sorting plants, it was shown that the use of difficult‐to‐recycle blended materials is rapidly growing. If the lack of recycling technology and production trend for fiber blends remains, a volume of more than 3400 Mt of waste will have been accumulated by 2030. This work highlights the urgent need to transform the textile industry from a biocatalytic perspective.

The prognosis for patients suffering from cardiovascular and many other diseases can be substantially improved if diagnosed at an early stage. High performance diagnostic testing using disposable microfluidic chips can provide a platform for realizing this vision. Åmic AB (Uppsala, Sweden) has developed a new microfluidic test chip for sandwich immunoassays fabricated by injection molding of the cycloolefin-copolymer Zeonor™. A highly ordered array of micropillars within the fluidic chip distributes the sample solution by capillary action. Since wetting of the pillar array surface is the only driving force for liquid distribution precise control of the surface chemistry is crucial. In this work we demonstrate a novel protocol for surface hydrophilization and antibody immobilization on cycloolefin-copolymer test chips, based on direct silanisation of the thermoplastic substrate. Dextran is subsequently covalently coupled to amino groups, thus providing a coating with a low contact angle suitable for antibody immobilization. The contact angle of dextran coated chips is stable for at least two months, which enables production of large batches that can be stored for extended periods of time. We demonstrate the utility of the presented platform and surface chemistry in a C-reactive protein assay with a detection limit of 2.6 ng ml⁻¹, a dynamic range of 10² and a coefficient of variance of 15%.

The topic of shedding of micro-sized polymeric particles, so called microplastics, from textiles has been covered by an increasing number of studies over the past years. However, the methods with which the shedding of microplastics from textiles has been measured so far has shown a large variation. Consequently, the results regarding the amount of shed particles also vary, from 120 to 728,289 particles from similar garments in recent studies. This article presents research enabling for identification of whether the shedding of microplastics from different types of fabric was dependent on construction parameters. As none of the methods in the existing literature could be used for evaluating shedding of microplastics from textiles, a method was developed for this purpose. The resulting final method is described in this paper as well as the work with minimizing the error sources and consequently the standard deviation of the results through selection of material samples, equipment and procedure for sample preparation, washing, filtering the washing water and analyzing the shed microplastics. Comparing the environmental load of different garments, or identifying improvement possibilities in garment construction are two examples of how the method can be utilized.

The applicability of life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the textile industry is discussed with a special focus on environmental impact from chemicals. Together with issues of water depletion and energy use, the use of chemicals and their emissions are important environmental considerations for textile products. However, accounting for chemicals is a weak point in LCA methodology and practice. Two research questions were investigated in a case study of hospital garments: 1) whether LCA adds value to assessments of the chemical performance of textile products, and 2) whether inclusion of toxicity issues in LCA affects environmental performance rankings for textile products. It is concluded that the quantitative and holistic tool LCA is useful for environmental decision makers in the textile industry, and becomes more effective when chemical impacts are included. A flexible way forward is demonstrated to meet the challenge of accounting for chemicals in LCAs of textile products.