It is well known that the “finishing” of a fabric is where a great deal of the environmental impact occurs – it uses the most water, chemicals and energy. “Finishing” includes not only the application of treatments to make fabric perform in a certain way (i.e., to be free of something, such as static, wrinkles, …
We wish you all a wonderful holiday season. We’ll be back in early 2012!
Last week we reviewed the ways enzymes are helping to give textile processes a lighter footprint while at the same time producing better finished goods – at a lower cost. Seems to be a win/win situation, until you begin to unpeel the onion: It begins with the production of the enzyme: Enzymes have always been …
Humankind has used enzymes for thousands of years to carry out important chemical reactions for making products such as cheese, beer, and wine. Bread and yogurt also owe their flavor and texture to a range of enzyme producing organisms that were domesticated many years ago. In the textile industry, one of the first areas which …
I really love Thanksgiving – it’s hard to ruin this holiday. Thanksgiving can be about nothing more than the name implies… expecting nothing, but giving profound thanks for our imperfect, nutty, busy, fractured, silly, wonderful lives. And since Thanksgiving asks us to slow down and think about all that we have to be thankful for, …
For tens of thousands of years, humans relied on nature to provide them with everything they needed to make their lives more comfortable -cotton and wool for clothes, wood for furniture, clay and ceramic for storage containers, even plants for medicines. But this all changed during the first half of the twentieth century, when organic chemistry developed methods to …
I just read an article about “green marketing” and how the manufacturer should downplay the green aspects of a product because “very few Americans have ever bought stuff because they want to save the planet.”[1] And I agree that most people just want their stuff, not a sermon. But when I hear something along the …
Polyester is a very popular fabric choice – it is, in fact, the most popular of all the synthetics. Because it can often have a synthetic feel, it is often blended with natural fibers, to get the benefit of natural fibers which breathe and feel good next to the skin, coupled with polyester’s durability, water …
Back in 2003, the Association for Contract Textiles (ACT), a trade organization for North American manufacturers of contract textiles consisting of many of the big textile companies (click here for members), identified the need for a universal standard to better serve suppliers, distributors and specifiers. According to Petie Davis of NSF International, a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization, …
So for the past two weeks we’ve discussed the differences between synthetic and natural fibers. But there’s more to consider than just the fiber content of the fabric you buy. There is the question of whether a natural fiber is organically grown, and what kind of processing is used to create the fabric. First, by substituting …
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