Non-woven fabric is a common material in our lives and is widely used in various daily products. According to application requirements, non-woven fabrics can be divided into two categories: durable and disposable. Durable non-woven fabrics can be used many times, have a certain service life, and are widely used in clothing, home improvement, agriculture, industry and other fields. For example, many eco-friendly bags that have been popular in recent years are made of non-woven fabrics.
Disposable non-woven fabrics are also common, such as wipes for cleaning, masks that everyone must use during the epidemic, tea bags for tea bags, baby diapers...
In fact, the three major fibers used to produce non-woven fabrics are polypropylene (63% of the total), polyester (23% of the total) and viscose (8% of the total), and the remaining 2% are Acrylic fiber, 1.5% is polyamide, 2.5% is other fibers .
Among them, viscose fibers are processed products of natural fibers, while polyester, polypropylene, acrylic and polyamide fibers are all chemical fibers and are also the main polymer components of synthetic plastics. Non-woven fabrics made of these chemical fibers are all plastic products. It can be seen that the vast majority (89.5%) of non-woven fabrics on the market are refractory plastic products.
On the Internet, some people call non-woven fabrics "easy to decompose, non-toxic, non-irritating, recyclable, and non-polluting", and are "a new generation of environmentally friendly materials" and "environmentally friendly products that protect the earth's ecology." However, this is true. ?
We take wet wipes, a representative product of non-woven fabrics, as an example, and conduct an objective analysis from the perspective of the entire product life cycle: raw material acquisition, processing, manufacturing, sales, use, and disposal.
The non-woven fabrics used to make wet wipes are mostly polyester fibers, and polyester fibers, as synthetic fossil-based fibers, are processed from non-renewable fossil raw materials such as oil, natural gas, or coal, just like other members of the plastic family. Fossil raw materials undergo a series of processing to obtain polyester melt, and polyester fiber is obtained after melt spinning .
Although plastic products can be recycled, used wipes have been contaminated and cannot be recycled. Waste wet wipes are classified as dry waste in the garbage classification, and the dry waste is usually treated by landfill, incineration, etc. Landfill leachate produced by plastic waste will pollute the soil and water bodies; while in another waste disposal method-waste incineration, non-woven fabrics made of plastic will also produce carcinogens, dioxins, Pollution such as acid gas.
But the invention of non-woven fabrics reduces costs, improves production efficiency, and brings many conveniences to our lives. With the development of non-woven technology and waste treatment technology, the harm caused by unit non-woven fabrics to the environment is gradually decreasing.
