Recycled wool, also known as rag wool or shoddy is any woollen textile or yarn made by shredding existing fabric and re-spinning the resulting fibres. Textile recycling is an important mechanism for reducing the need for raw wool in manufacturing.
Shoddy was invented by Benjamin Law of Batley in 1813.[1][2] It was the dominant industry of Batley and neighbouring towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire, known as the Heavy Woollen District, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.[3][4][5][6] Following its decline in the United Kingdom, the centre of the shoddy trade shifted to the city of Panipat in India.[7][8] Efforts have been made to revive the British recycled wool industry in the 21st century.[9]
- ^ Jubb, Samuel (1860). The History of the Shoddy-trade: Its Rise, Progress, and Present Position. London: Houlston and Wright.
- ^ Shell, Hanna Rose (2020). Shoddy: From Devil's Dust to the Renaissance of Rags. Chicago: University of Chicago. pp. 19–35. ISBN 9780226377759.
- ^ Malin, John Christopher (1979). The West Riding recovered wool industry, ca. 1813–1939 (PhD thesis). University of York.
- ^ Hudson, Pat (11 April 2002). The Genesis of Industrial Capital: A Study of West Riding Wool Textile Industry, C.1750-1850. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521890892.
- ^ Clapham, J. H. (20 December 2018). Revival: The Woollen and Worsted Industries (1907). Routledge. ISBN 9781351342483.
- ^ Clapp, B. W. (15 July 2014). An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution. Routledge. ISBN 9781317893035.
- ^ "Panipat, the global centre for recycling textiles, is fading". The Economist. 7 September 2017. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- ^ "In Panipat, the world's 'castoff capital', business hangs by a thread". hindustantimes.com/. 28 April 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- ^ "Evergreen: From shoddy manufacture to textile recycling". ENDS Report. Retrieved 24 March 2019.