Loading…
Electronic textiles and product lifetimes: teardowns
Wickenden, Rachael; Mclaren, Angharad; Hardy, Dorothy
Electronic textiles (E-textiles), the combination of electronics with textiles, pose significant
challenges for the extension of product lifetimes, reuse, recycling and end-of-life disposal. E-textiles
products can be divided into two categories: the first is the ‘vision’ of ubiquitous computing, achieved
using computation seamlessly integrated into garments, home furnishings and other textiles the second
is the often-overlooked commercial reality of E-textiles that covers a variety of hybrid electronic-textile
products such as electric blankets and novelty items such as light-up musical Christmas jumpers. The
products in both categories contain a combination of hazardous and valuable substances dispersed
throughout low value, difficult to recycle, heterogeneous material. The market for E-textiles is predicted
to expand rapidly, but little has been done to ensure environmental factors are considered during
product design and development. This paper reports on a series of E-textile product teardowns
conducted to identify the strengths and weakness of commercially available E-textile products, using
eco-design and clothing longevity guidelines (Cooper et al., 2016; Köhler, 2013b) as a framework for
analysis.
Is Part Of
Published in: PLATE – Product lifetimes and the environment : 3rd PLATE Conference, September 18–20, 2019 Berlin, Germany, Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin
Published by ISBN 978-3-7983-3125-9
