Sustainability Based Upcycling and Value Addition of Textile Apparels

Because of alarming level of green house gases (GHG) in the environment, fast depleting natural resources such as water, petroleum products and increasing level of industrial effluents, every single manufacturing activity has come under the scrutiny of sustainability. Textile materials form a large chunk of human consumption and as the standard of life is improving globally the per capita consumption of textiles and apparels is also increasing. In this backdrop, the affluent segment of the society is adopting "make-use-andthrow" approach, which is giving rise to large scale manufacturing on one hand and the pressure of disposing of the used clothing on the other. The researchers in the field of sustainability are thus talking about responsible consumption and recycling of used materials. By refurbishing of such used apparels by involving minimum processing and value addition technique, it is possible that once again, such products can be put into useful purpose. The present research work addresses this issue of converting once used clothing by refurbishing and value addition. In developing countries a large chunk of food grains are spoiled and left to germinate due to improper storage conditions and their dampening. Hence in another piece of research explores the possibility of extracting of the starches from the waste products such as germinated food grains and investigates its applicability as a thickener in textile printing. This attempt has dual purpose of waste utilization on one hand and value addition to the once used textile garments. Hence, this attempt also advocates sustainability in manufacturing by reducing considerably the overall carbon foot prints.