How Saahas Zero Waste Boosted Textile Recovery with Smart Sorting Technology

Post-consumer textile waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in India — but sorting it accurately is still a major challenge.Most recovery centers rely on manual sorting, where workers must distinguish cotton from polyester, blends, and coated fabrics by touch and experience alone.This leads to contamination, inefficiencies, and significant loss of usable material.

To solve this, Saahas Zero Waste integrated FibreSENSE, KOSHA’s portable fibre-identification device, into their textile recovery workflow.

Here’s how it transformed their sorting efficiency.

The Challenge: Manual Sorting and High Contamination

Textile waste streams arriving at the recovery center contained a mix of:

• cotton

• polyester

• cotton-polyester blends

• coated fabrics

Manual identification was slow, subjective, and inconsistent.This resulted in:

• high contamination in sorted fractions

• loss of usable material

• reduced recovery rates

• low confidence among sorters when handling complex fabrics

Operating in a low-infrastructure environment made accuracy even harder.

The Solution: Deploying FibreSENSE at the Recovery Center

Saahas Zero Waste deployed FibreSENSE at Hasiru Dala’s recovery center to support waste sorters with scientific, real-time fibre identification.

What FibreSENSE enabled

• Instant detection of cotton, polyester, and blends

• ±10% blend detection accuracy

• Identification of coated fabrics

• Portable, non-destructive testing suitable for low-infra facilities

• A no-code interface that allowed waste workers to operate the device without technical expertise

This empowered workers to sort with higher confidence and autonomy.

The Impact: Faster Sorting, Better Recovery & Data-Backed Segregation

1. Over 200+ kg of textile waste sorted

The deployment directly supported the sorting of 200+ kilograms of post-consumer textile waste with improved speed and accuracy.

2. Improved material recovery

By reducing contamination and misclassification, FibreSENSE helped increase the overall recovery of valuable materials.

3. Data-driven segregation

Every test generated verifiable data, allowing the recovery center to make decisions backed by scientific insights rather than guesswork.

4. Increased user independence

Sorters were able to use the device confidently thanks to its simple, intuitive interface — reducing dependency on supervisors or experienced identifiers.

Why FibreSENSE Was the Right Fit

• Fast sorting for high-volume recovery centers

• Portable design ideal for decentralized facilities

• Non-destructive testing for all fabric types

• Effective even in low-infrastructure environments

Conclusion

By integrating FibreSENSE into its recovery operations, Saahas Zero Waste demonstrated how smart, portable technology can close gaps in textile waste management.The result was faster sorting, better-quality segregation, empowered workers, and a meaningful boost to textile recovery rates.

When waste is sorted right, recycling becomes viable — and technologies like FibreSENSE make that future possible.