Textile products are typically produced through a complex, multi-step process that includes design, cutting, and assembly, resulting in waste alongside the desired product. Efforts have been made to reduce waste in production lines, but this doesn’t work well for textile products with rigid components like shoes, bras, or knee pads. These items are difficult to recycle due to their multiple materials and must be disassembled before recycling, often leading to environmental pollution.
There’s a need for alternative materials and innovative fabrication techniques to create these products with minimal waste and efficient recycling or biodegradation processes. This research combines scientific methods and design thinking to advance both fields and aims to develop a new approach for crafting fully knitted textile objects containing both soft and rigid structures using a single biodegradable material that can alter properties under specific conditions.
