While much progress is being made in automating technologies for the rapid sorting of textile waste to enable accelerated fibre-to-fibre recycling, Fabritell, developed by London, UK-based Matoha, is a useful new tool for manual operations.

“For the near future, manual sorting practices will still be common, and Fabritell enables fabrics to be identified in just half a second, enabling a large number of garments to be quickly and accurately sorted,” said Mahota co-founder and CTO Hans Chan, introducing the device at the recent Dornbirn-GFC in Austria.

A programmable LED below the screen enables a particular colour for a specific fibre – such as 90% blue cotton – to be specified, and the Fabritell app enables additional information to be recorded and exported to the cloud for waste stream audits.

Fabritell supports the ten most common fibre types and 13 blends, with a 5-10% detection threshold for contamination.

In addition to the handheld device, Fabritell is also available in desktop and bench versions for bulk sorting and can also be employed in projects aimed at automating existing technologies.

www.matoha.com