Process-integrated ResourceManagement-An Efficient Instrument for environmentally Friendly TextileFinishing


Environmental awareness has long ceased to be the preserveof production plants in Europe. In the so-called developing countries,authorities are focussing increasingly on big polluters. Unfortunately, in thiscontext textile wet finishing has an extremely bad reputation all around theworld. However, there is some hope that a new, integrated environmental conceptfrom Swiss textile machinery manufacturer Benninger, which can run withoutproducing any waste water at all, may well make this bad reputation a thing ofthe past in the next few years render this negative reputation a thing of thepast


Worldwide, only around 10% of total water consumption isaccounted for by direct human needs .The lion's share of 70% is used inagriculture, and the remaining 20% is used in industry. Regional variationsgive an indication of the degree of industrialisation of the different nationaleconomies. For example, China uses 80% of its water to irrigate fields, whereasin Europe half of the water is pumped into factories. All this is in starkcontrast to the geographical distribution of the resource "water".While China is home to around 20% of the world's population, it only has accessto around 5% of world's freshwater supplies. Conflicts in this area are already(pre-) programmed.


A large amount of our drinking water is already used duringthe production of food. For example, it takes 5,000 litres of water to producejust one kilogram of meat for human consumption. But also vegetarians have animpact: The production of both one kilogram of bread or one litre of orangejuice entails the use of 1000 litres of water. In the light of this, theremaining consumption of an average household in Switzerland seems to be rathermodest, which adds up in a daily water consumption of approximately 162 litresper head (a Swiss household needs for example: showers/washing 32 l, toiletflushing 48 l, washing machine 30 l, cooking, drinking, washing up etc. 20 l).


Water and energy always have been the two main components inthe production of textile fabrics .The majority of it goes into the productionof the natural fibres: Regardless of whether cotton, wool or linen is concerned,the plants need to be watered throughout their entire lifecycle, and the sheepneed to be fed and watered. In the case of cotton, this can sum up to as muchas 20,000 litres of water per kilogram (in Sudan as much as 29,000 l). Againstthe background of increasing shortages of global resources, these are alarmingfigures, albeit ones which can be dramatically reduced with the aid ofinnovative irrigation techniques (plantation cultivation / "dripirrigation"). With these new techniques, the production of one kilogram ofcotton still requires between 7,000 and 9,000 litres of water, but the downwardtrend at least gives some cause for hope.


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StephanKehry is associated with Benninger AG, Switzerland "www.benningergroup.com"