Using textile waste as a sustainable alternative to underground irrigation in Brazil’s semi arid region

Abstract

The problem of water scarcity has been the subject of major discussions in society and among governments. Water is a fundamental resource for the survival of living beings and is becoming increasingly scarce, with projections showing that one in four people on Earth may be suffering from extreme water scarcity by the year 2025. Irrigation is the artificial application of water to the soil in order to maintain adequate moisture for the growth of a given crop. Among the various types of irrigation, underground irrigation is promising for use in regions with water scarcity, since water can be transported directly to the plant roots, with little loss due to surface evaporation, as happens in other types of irrigation, such as sprinkling. Thus, due to this growing water scarcity and excessive use of water by agriculture, and considering the importance of irrigation for the promotion of food and nutritional security of populations, this work presents as an alternative the use of textile waste for an application in agriculture, proposing a sustainable solution for the destination of waste from the fashion industry that are usually dumped in the trash, generating environmental problems. The development of the simple technology of subterranean irrigation based on textile residues, presented here, led to the rational use of water in constructed experimental seedbeds, without apparent damage to the development of crops, which may strengthen family farming and have a significant impact on the economic growth of the region, if the technology is applied in scale. In general, all the experimental field results demonstrated that the devices developed with pieces of synthetic textile waste were able to transport water to distant areas of the soil, keeping it moist at root level and contributing to better growth of the tested plants. In other words, all the devices constructed to enable subterranean textile irrigation by capillarity worked adequately, in a qualitative analysis. The idealized and tested devices have in common the fact that they are grassroot technologies, low cost, easy to build, implement and maintain; simplicity; possibility of mastery of the technology by the beneficiaries themselves; and generators of shared knowledge between the proponents and the beneficiaries. In short, potential generators of social impact for this population that needs inclusive solutions so much.