When you think of advanced futuristic clothing, what comes to mind?
Perhaps shirts that can detect and alert users to low blood glucose levels or socks that can track your running form, step count and speed? What about pyjamas that observe subtle bodily changes while you sleep leading to early detection of cancer or warn carers of imminent seizures? Imagine if all these were items that required no external power source, just the energy generated by your own body.
Although these products are not in the shops yet that day is not far off.
Researchers are already designing advanced textiles that look exactly like regular clothes or fabrics but come with with embedded electronic functions. These are referred to as electronics textiles, e-textiles or smart fabrics.
E-textiles integrate sensing, computation and power into fabrics so that the threads themselves become the sensors and the stitches become the circuits. These textiles can monitor health, temperature, motion and air quality. They can communicate wirelessly and harvest various forms of energy.
University and industry prototypes are currently progressing through clinical trials and are being tested outside labs. The global market for e-textiles is projected to reach over US$15 billion (£11.14 billion) by 2028.
Developments in e-textiles will revolutionise the way humanity views clothing; but at what cost?
A new type of waste
Electronic waste is the fastest growing EU waste stream with a record 62 million tonnes discarded in 2022.
Another 92 million tonnes of waste is generated globally from textiles; a figure expected to reach 134 million by 2030. Textiles alone account for 6.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions with the average European discarding a staggering 11kg of textiles per year.
Electronic textiles will bring a new kind of hybrid waste. E‑textiles commonly use mixed polymers, metal nanoparticle inks, and include components that create fire hazards within conventional textile recycling.
They can release toxic residues if incinerated or landfilled. This results in hazardous and precious materials becoming trapped within garments, leading not only to environmental and health problems, but to a loss of vital resources such as graphene and rare-earth elements. Silver, for instance, is used in conductive yarns, antimicrobial coatings, sensors and electrodes. We need to work out how to recover it because it is valuable as well as toxic to aquatic life in some forms.
