Waste and recycled textiles as reinforcements of building materials

Abstract

Currently the use of composite materials in the construction areas has had a great impact on the society. Mainly, those related with sustainability and environment aspects. Daily proposals aimed at overcoming the properties of traditional materials arise; which includes emergent materials either from waste or recycled products. One of them is related to textile materials, which including fibers such as wool, hemp, linen and cotton. In the last decade, special attention has been focused on the used clothes, which represent a source of raw materials environmentally responsible and economically profitable. Textile materials are discarded daily around the world, representing approximately 1.5% of the generated waste. Blue-jeans are the most used clothing in the world, they are elaborated by one of the most commonly used natural textile fibers, cotton. Textile materials have been reused in different applications, for example, in the production of poor quality wires, crushed to manufacture insulating materials noise and temperature, and as fillers or reinforcements of concrete. In this chapter, different topics are describing, including: a) Environmental impact of textile waste a result of massive consumption of clothing; b) Recycling and resuse of textile waste, and c) Waste and recycled textile materials used as building materials.