Waste in the Textile Industry
About this episode
Dr Madiha Ahmad discusses her PhD research on reducing waste in the textile industry through innovative manufacturing techniques.
How much waste is produced then your clothes are manufactured? And it there anything that can be done to reduce that? The Pentland Centre’s Dr Madiha Ahmad joins us to talk about her PhD research at Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, which involved looking at sew-free techniques that dramatically reduce fabric wastage. Madiha tells us about textiles in her Pakistan homeland, where it is an $18bn industry, and we go in-depth on how fibres become yarn becomes fabric, spanning global supply chains and representing a more complicated process than you might imagine. We learn about the lifecycle of fibres as they become fabrics and garments; about issues of over-consumption, fast fashion, and landfill, but also how waste is created when a garment is produced; and about the many technicalities of weaving. Madiha reveals the many layers of sustainability that need to be considered, and how knowledge and practice in this area can be part of a company’s international competitiveness. We talk about fabric waste, and how this is both a natural part of the standard manufacturing process but also something that could be tackled with a different weaving method – one that will have you…
People in this episode
Hosts: Jan, Paul
Guest: Dr Madiha Ahmad
Topics covered
- textile waste
- sustainability
- manufacturing processes
- fast fashion
- global supply chains
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Heriot-Watt University, Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business
Places: Pakistan, Edinburgh
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