Discarded Clothing for Arena Footing?

[StormyDay]

So, I just finished reading the story in National Geographic about fast fashion waste. Essentially, the clothes you donate to goodwill that don’t sell get shipped to Chile or Ghana and go into a giant mound.
And it got me thinking; don’t we use textiles in arena footing? It seems like a whole lot of arenas could be built out of discarded clothes. I know GGT is more of a felt than a fabric, but it seems like the blend of most clothing (polyester, cotton, etc) would be perfect for holding moisture and providing cushion when mixed with sand.

Thoughts?

[betonbill]

Interesting idea. It would be interesting to see how it would work. Finally shredded textiles mixed with other ingredients should do fine. I saw an article about a woman in, I believe Africa, who made building bricks out of discarded fabric and clothing and a fixative. They were colorful, very sturdy, and not expensive.

Also, not fabric, but I’ve seen where plastic has been recycled with other ingredients for highways in India. It sounded like the resulting highway lasted longer than with regular materials.

We have to start thinking outside of the box.

[StormyDay]

@betonbill

Interesting idea. It would be interesting to see how it would work. Finally shredded textiles mixed with other ingredients should do fine. I saw an article about a woman in, I believe Africa, who made building bricks out of discarded fabric and clothing and a fixative. They were colorful, very sturdy, and not expensive.

Also, not fabric, but I’ve seen where plastic has been recycled with other ingredients for highways in India. It sounded like the resulting highway lasted longer than with regular materials.

We have to start thinking outside of the box.

I thought of building blocks too, I’m glad someone is doing that. It seems it would be an ecologically friendly alternative. I could even see it being used as is in true adobe housing as an additive to make the clay stronger.
Also, maybe it could be used to make children’s toys?

[fivestrideline]

Hmm I wonder. Fast fashion is barely fiber and mostly plastic, so I’m unsure how that would handle arena use. There’s a place around here that uses shredded carpet and tires as mixers for the footing, but I’m not sure in what capacity the very fine plastic “fabric” of clothing would be useful.

I’ve seen deck chairs and outdoor furniture made of recycled plastic and clothing. That is pretty fascinating as a use - they already make them out of crappy plastic so why not use recycled stuff?

[Lusoluv]

Uta Graf uses shredded carpet for her outdoor dressage arenas. A barn I was at in the mid-90s used shredded Nike shoe soles (very colorful). We got the shoe soles very cheaply because they were a cast-off from the factory. It was compressed into big bales and delivered on pallets. We loved it.

[TomNeese]

I’ve done it….After researching footing and discovering most fiber was recycled textiles, and that textile recyclers were the parent companies of some footing companies. I took a sample of my favorite fiber footing (NOT GGT) and asked a recycler in St Louis if they could duplicate it, I have 7500lbs of shredded polyester sweaters in my indoor (3/4lb per sq ft). The cost was $1800 vs $10K the commercial footing company wanted. I LOVE my footing