The hugeresource consumption to produce a textile fabric is by far too high and not inline with best practices that are available today. The industry needs toconcentrate on the production process, especially when it comes to thewet-process area and the related end-of-pipe situation, says Peter Waeber, CEO and Founder of Switzerland basedBluesign Technologies.

 

The textile industry is one of thelargest polluters worldwide when it comes to wastewater or air emission. Andabove all, it's still a sad fact that resource consumption in textileproduction is far too high. However, solutions are already available to producetextiles with fewer resources and there is no excuse not to use them. Inaddition, the machinery industry offers technologies that can supportstate-of-the-art process engineering to further reduce the resource consumptiondramatically. The bio-capacity of our earth is exceeded and our generation, notour children, has to solve this problem with utmost urgency.

 

Globally over the past years, thefocus was primarily on critical chemical substances in the textile chain -mainly because of the pressure from NGOs (e.g. Greenpeace Detox). Many brandsand retailers were criticised and forced to deliver solutions, which led tosearch for immediate actions. Large organisations such as Sustainable ApparelCoalition (SAC), the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) or the Zero Dischargeof Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) were in focus as well. As a result, the ZDHCpublished a Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL) for chemicalproducts that partly fulfils this demand and the OIA started to develop ascheme for chemicals management.

 

From a Bluesign Technologiesperspective, the real problem that the whole textile industry is facing is onanother "playing field". The huge resource consumption to produce atextile fabric is by far too high and not in-line with best practices that areavailable today. The textile industry should concentrate more on the productionprocess, especially when it comes to the wet-process area and the relatedend-of-pipe situation.


From aholistic approach, there are maybe three main criteria for a more sustainableproduct:

 

1) Everything starts with aflawless input - to ensure this a clean chemical product selection is necessary.

 

2) Maybe the most important pointis the process engineering in the mill itself - even with the greenestchemistry, it is not guaranteed that the outcome will be environmentally soundand safe - the process management with an input-stream-management approach iscrucial.

 

3) A perfect management ofend-of-pipe is in any case necessary and should be on a level that there willbe no negative impact to the environment. Especially in this area governmentsand legislation often don't reflect state-of-the-art and rigorous enforcementis not universal.

 

All three aspects togetherwill help to produce a more sustainable product and reduce resource consumptiondramatically. This will help responsible brands and retailers in the future toreduce their footprint to make a difference in the supply chain.

 

The current production of a textile product is continuing to be heavily loaded with negative messages in the media worldwide. As soon as transparency, truthfulness and fairness of fashionable, trendy and nice textile products are given, customers will be willing to dig deeper into their wallets. In the future, open and honest communication will make the difference in brand success.

 

Bluesign Technologies has developed a tool together with leading chemical industry players to optimise exactly the mentioned issues. Bluesign Technologies' goal is to reduce water consumption by a minimum of 50 per cent with intelligent processes, energy consumption by 30 per cent by using smart chemistry, and chemicals consumption by 15 per cent by "buying less - but the best".

 

The software tool named Bluesign BlueXpert is an instrument to help textile manufacturers to optimise these three criteria with one tool:

 

1) The input of chemicals are from Bluesign Bluefinder - a chemical database with more than 6,000 approved chemicals.

 

2) The manufacturer can select from best practice examples from leading chemical suppliers based on their accumulated knowledge over decades to optimise the processes regarding resource consumption and associated costs.

 

3) As a result, the impact on the environment will be minimised and simultaneously the cost situation will be optimised.

 

This combination is unique and gives textile manufacturers the possibility to calculate resources and cost savings with their own data and local costs (e.g. energy, water, chemicals etc.). The Bluesign BlueXpert will be launched in first quarter of 2016.