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When thinking about how to tackle waste, Goodwill faces a monumental task, not just with used clothing but with housewares, books, décor and all the other items it receives.
The Ontario Great Lakes region alone, which stretches from Windsor to the Greater Toronto Area, received over 43 million pounds of donations in the last fiscal year, a portion of which cannot be resold or reused.
With a mandate to recycle and divert as much as possible from landfills, the organization knew it couldn’t handle the volume of donations on its own, so Goodwill leaders turned to Western University and Fanshawe College researchers for help.
“We don’t always have the resources or the expertise to look at alternative methods of sorting, so we rely on external partners like Western to help us with those opportunities,” said John Quigley, manager of sustainability at Goodwill, Ontario Great Lakes. “Western is a cutting-edge university that has phenomenal resources, and working with its scholars allows us to explore new approaches for automation, advancing technology and improving process flows.”
Western researchers have been working with Goodwill to innovate with two unique projects; one with Fanshawe that is turning clothing waste into materials to support plant growth and the other using AI to help divert waste from landfills.
Turning textile waste into materials to enrich soil
Hoping to find unique ways to keep used clothing that couldn’t be resold from ending up in landfill, Goodwill partnered with Western’s Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources (ICFAR) and Jennifer Wright, professor and researcher from Fanshawe’s Fashion Design program and Centre for Research and Innovation.
Franco Berruti, founding director of ICFAR holding up a jar of biochar. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
Franco Berruti, founding director of ICFAR, says the partnership has led to a strong, and ongoing collaboration with Fanshawe.
“Textile waste is often difficult to recycle using conventional methods because it’s a mixture of different kinds of fibres with dyes and additives. That means many textiles end up in landfills,” said Heejin Lee, a postdoctoral research associate appointed at Fanshawe and collaborating with ICFAR.
“I used a thermal process called pyrolysis, where materials are heated in the absence of oxygen and broken down into different components like biochar.”
A thermal process called pyrolysis turns the textile waste on the left into the biochar seen on the right. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance consisting mainly of porous carbon which, once added to the soil, can help retain nutrients, support micro-organisms and improve plant growth — turning something that could otherwise harm the environment into a value-added product. The biochar Lee creates is made from textile waste, which can include synthetic fibres derived from plastics or petroleum, as well as natural fibres such as cotton. Her research has found that, under optimal conditions, plants can grow better with the textile-derived biochar than without it.
“Through our research, we have developed a way to lock carbon into the soil instead of releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere. With so many countries, like Canada, putting a tax on CO2 emissions, trapping it has been both an environmental and an economic benefit,” said Berruti.
Neha Batta, a Western postdoctoral research fellow with ICFAR, focuses her research on natural fabrics and how enzymes can help break them down.
“About 80 per cent of thrifted textiles (in North America) still end up in landfills, so it’s imperative that we find different ways of disposing of them,” said Batta.
She notes that although natural fabrics like cotton or hemp do break down, they still release emissions that are harmful to the environment.
But by using enzymes to break them down into sugars, researchers are creating a product with a variety of uses, including fermentation.
While both Lee and Batta’s projects have only been tried on a small scale, their research is ongoing and they have applied, through their collaboration with Wright and Fanshawe’s Centre for Research and Innovation, for a federal grant to scale up, find more applications for their products and start tackling clothing waste on a larger scale.
Goodwill estimates approximately 75 per cent of the donated textiles it receives can be reused through resale.
Since starting more than four years ago, the team has diverted 5,000 pounds of clothing waste from landfills, and as the project scales over the next few years, the aim is to tackle the remaining 25 per cent that cannot be resold.
Using AI to identify, sort, and recover valuable materials
Another unique project is also helping Goodwill improve diversion rates and reduce waste going to landfill.
Min Xia, a Western engineering professor, was invited by Goodwill to tour its facilities and look for efficiencies – that’s when he saw an opportunity to implement AI in their sorting process.
Xia’s research focuses on applying responsible AI to industrial systems and adapting and elevating state-of-the-art technology to solve a wide range of problems in mechanical and chemical engineering.
Currently, donated items are sorted by hand on tables for resale, recycling or disposal in a landfill. Goodwill’s goal is to repurpose as much as possible, but some pieces inevitably fall through the cracks.
Xia saw an opportunity to optimize this process by making it easier and faster for workers to sort through the items.
He is currently developing an AI system that uses smart cameras to scan and categorize donations as they pass on a conveyor belt.
(L to R) Ovindu Medagedara, PhD student, and Xin Zhou, postdoctoral research associate, setting up an AI system that uses smart cameras to scan and categorize donations on conveyor belt. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
“Cameras will help to identify the items, and if they miss them, the system will give the workers a signal to easily identify them. Then again at the end of the conveyor, there will be another camera to guarantee nothing ends up in the landfill that shouldn’t,” Xia said.
He says the new system, once up and running, will improve operational efficiency and reduce waste going to landfill.
With one of Goodwill’s core principles being to help underemployed people find work, Xia also felt it was important to develop a solution that helps employees do their jobs more efficiently, rather than a tool to replace them.
“This system can help support employees, so they feel less stress,” he said.
So far, Xia’s team has filmed 18 hours of video to help train the system to recognize what to expect on the conveyor belt, and they are working to get the system fully operational within the next year.
“Organizations like Goodwill are doing a fantastic job of making a more sustainable society while also creating jobs,” said Xia. “These kinds of collaborations help more people become involved in the circular economy and think about how they can reuse and recycle more sustainably.”
