Green Articles
Retailers Want Cleaner and Greener Manufacturing
More and more retailers and brand name sellers will be asking if they haven’t already, what chemicals, what machines and how much water and energy are used to make products. Companies like Cotton Incorporated are staying on the cutting edge by producing ways to help the entire supply chain to operate “greener”.
Operational Transparency emerged after a key theme was echoed at the inaugural Cotton Sustainability Summit. Brands such as Wal-Mart, Marks & Spencer and Nike reiterated the importance and responsibility the vendors had to the retailers when it comes to making their products. Each brand has committed to having a certain criteria that will decide whether they will be “on board” with that manufacture.
Kim Brander, Wal-Mart’s Corporate Brand Manager for Sustainable Textiles phrased it best…"we focus on what can be improved upon, and to coach better business practices[with our suppliers].”[1]
Water recycling presents a global challenge to the textile wet processing industry, which, like many industries using large volumes of water, produces an overflow requiring special treatment before being released into the environment. The INNOVA International, Inc recently developed a new idea in bleaching that will reduce the time and energy consumption as well as the impact of conventional bleaching. The testing shows that the INNOVA process reduces the time by 15 to 30 percent; and water consumption by 66 to 75 percent. Even better, these improvements can be made without installing different and new bleaching machinery that would be extremely expensive.
“By using a combination of specialty chemistry's and creating the processing sequence to be more efficient, it’s now possible to produce fabrics that are of comparable strength and whiteness to those made through more conventional methods. It not only takes less time but takes less of a toll on the environment.”[2]
The benefits to the environment is huge and numerous. The process produces 70 percent savings in water consumption, reduces the amount of chemistry used in bleaching which in turn reduces the amount of waste. Cotton Incorporated has done a great service to many by simply wanting to improve and raise the bar for other manufacturers’ to get with the program and produce cleaner and greener ways to help the environment.
Article by A. Winter (1, 2) TextileWorld.com/ Innovations In Cotton
