Design for Recycling of E-Textiles: Current Issues of Recycling of Products Combining Electronics and Textiles and Implications for a Circular Design Approach

Circular economy principles and eco-design guidelines such as design for recycling gain increasing importance to improve recyclability of products. The market of textiles with electronic components—so-called electronic textiles (e-textiles)–grows quickly entailing an increase in waste due to obsolete and defect products. This chapter presents insights into the current state of e-textile recycling in Europe. As electronic recycling differs from textile recycling, a survey of sorting and recycling businesses in Europe was conducted to obtain insights into the current and future handling of e-textiles. The survey results reveal that e-textiles have so far played a minor role for sorting and recycling companies, but about one-third of the businesses already experienced issues in recycling e-textiles. While some of the respondents have already developed processing concepts, the overall occurrence of e-textiles is so low that businesses are unlikely to develop recycling solutions. However, with increasing market volume, waste will also increase and recycling requires improvement to reduce environmental impact. Based on the survey results, recommendations for improving the recyclability and recycling rate of e-textiles are proposed. This includes expanding the scope of current regulations to e-textiles to apply guidelines for integrating sustainable end-of-life solutions in the product design process, acknowledging current shortcomings of the recycling industry