Building Circularity: Diverting end-of-use Textiles from Landfill to Boost Soil Amendment for Urban Farming Furthering Food Security

Finding innovative solutions to industrial textile waste is an immediate challenge for the fashion industry and society at large. Bringing cellulosic textile waste, free of dyes and finishes, back to the soil is a circular solution for manufacturer textile offcuts and has the potential to provide organic matter to soil through a variety of amendments. This pilot studied the impacts of 100% cotton greige textile waste as a soil amendment, using cotton shred as a feedstock for creating cotton cover, cotton compost and cotton biochar soil amendments. The sweetie cherry tomato seed was used to grow 32 test plants and the team monitored plants for height, fruit quantity at harvest, aboveground biomass at harvest, soil health and plant tissue health against control plots in an urban farming facility.