Designing a Textile Waste Service to Increase the Reuse of Materials through Textile Identification Technology and Improved Systems

Yodomo is designing an innovative waste and reuse service that works locally with businesses and creative communities to prevent textiles from becoming prematurely downgraded or sent to landfill or incineration. Addressing pre-consumer surplus textiles of all grades, it will reduce carbon footprint whilst supporting creative microbusinesses with free or low-cost materials to provide a truly circular solution to the urgent issue of textile waste.

Our current system collects continuous textile waste from 40+ businesses, which is brought to our hub in Hackney and sorted into identifiable textile types. Our community of 1000+ creative microbusinesses collect materials and turn them into new products. We collect data on the materials we receive, register materials taken away and gather information on products created by members.

Our innovative commercial textile waste service will meet the demand of businesses looking to better report on where their waste ends up, whilst ensuring materials stay at their highest value within the economic system for as long as possible.

The newly designed service will charge businesses to collect their pre-consumer textile waste, using innovative UK-made identification technology at the source to better sort and redistribute them to our growing community of creative microbusinesses and makers. Wherever reuse is not possible, we will work with UK partners to shred materials so that they can continue to be used as paper packaging, ensuring that nothing goes to waste.

Our waste system will offer detailed data reporting that will be valuable to business clients, introduce better sorting methods at source, and employ new textile identification technology which uses infrared analysis techniques and machine-learning algorithms to allow for commercial reuse opportunities that would otherwise not be viable. Materials otherwise destined for disposal or downgrade will be reintroduced into the economy at their highest-possible value, integrating a circular solution to the textiles industry.