News Flash

NanoSphere will be ecologically safe for soft textiles

03 Feb '09

3 min read

Which of us is not familiar with that moment of horror: During a fine pasta meal, a splash of omato sauce lands on the white table cloth, the half glass of red wine sloshes over the new designer sofa or the cappuccino spilled in bed leaves its mark right through the mattress cover. No problem for functional soft furnishings with NanoSphere.

Because, thanks to the clever self-cleaning effect, upholstery, table linen and even bedclothes and mattresses with NanoSphere stay clean and attractive for longer. Liquids or other soiling can be quickly and simply mopped off a fabric surface treated with NanoSphere with a cloth or easily wiped off. That is not only practical, it also pays off and promotes sustainability, as Jochen Schmidt, Head of Business Line Functional Effects, Clariant International Ltd., explained during his lecture at Heimtextil 2009 in Frankfurt.

Annual water requirement for 36,000 people can easily be saved
Christmas is just over. Many families marked the occasion and often the table linen needed washing although it had only been used once. With an average water consumption of 50 liters per cycle and for example 40 million households in Germany, the saving would amount to 2 billion liters if every household could forgo washing its table linen just once during the Christmas season! This is roughly the equivalent of the water consumption of New York City over 50 days. Or – with an average water consumption of 150 liters in Europe per day and inhabitant - the annual water requirement of 36,000 people could be covered if the whole of Germany did just one wash less.

A clear conscience and money in the till
Because textiles with a NanoSphere finish need less frequent laundering, and can be washed at lower temperatures, the savings over the service life of hotel linen, for example, can clearly be seen in the accounts. If the item is laundered 30 times instead of 100 and at 40° instead of 60°, the expenditure on water and electricity is reduced in a sample calculation from 27.8 to 6.8 cent – i.e. the costs per wash drop (calculated without detergent) to a quarter!

And the possible savings go even further. The most modern washing machines achieve a good cleaning result even at 20°C. While a 60°C wash – depending on machine type – requires approximately 1.02 kWh, a 20°C program needs just 0.16 kWh. This means around 0.86 kWh less which, when the figures are done for Germany alone, represents a reduction of 6.1 million euro, if 40 million households did just one wash at 20°C instead of 60°C. If this were to happen once a week, the savings would amount to 317 million; if one such low-temperature wash per day were done in each household, over 2 billion euro would be saved a year. These are figures that speak for themselves.

Furthermore, NanoSphere conforms to the bluesign Standard. Unlike other textile standards, bluesign examines all the textile-relevant substances from the very beginning and not just

More Schoeller Technologies AG News... More Textiles News - Switzerland...