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 …
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, …
The SMART Sustainable Product Standards is a group of standards, applicable to building materials, apparel, textiles and flooring. These products constitute 60% of the world’s products, according to the SMART website . The SMART standards for these products are, again according to their website, “based on transparency, using consensus based metrics and life-cycle analysis.” The …
I have an apology to make: I made a statement last week that turns out to be incorrect, based on experience from years ago. I said “it’s not unusual to find a GOTS certification logo on a product – because it’s hard to get, and those who have it certainly want to display the logo. …
Fabric might be the only product I can think of which is known by its component parts, like cotton, silk, wool. These words usually refer to the fabric rather than the fiber used to make the fabric. We’ve all done it: talked about silk draperies, cotton sheets. There seems to be a disassociation between the …
Let’s look at just three areas in which your fabric choice impacts you directly: 1. What are residual chemicals in the fabrics doing to you and the planet? 2. What are the process chemicals expelled in treatment water doing to us? 3. Why do certain fiber choices accelerate climate change? RESIDUAL CHEMICALS …
Last week we talked about the use of salt in textile dyeing. We always say the textile industry uses a LOT of three resources: water, chemicals and energy. The use of salt (a chemical – benign, essential for life, but a chemical nevertheless) bumps up the other two considerably. And though the salt itself is …
We’re often asked if ALL the chemicals used in textile processing are harmful. And the answer is (surprisingly maybe) no! Many chemicals are used, many benign, but as with everything these days there are caveats. Let’s look at the chemical that is used most often in the textile industry: salt. That’s right. Common table …
For hundreds of years, a “luxury” item was something that was so well produced, so exclusive, and thus so expensive, that only the few – the elite – had access and the financial means to buy it. Luxury was marketed to the rich as being a part of their social fabric, and to everyone else …
We published this blog almost two years ago, but the concepts haven’t changed and we think it’s very important. So here it is again: Although most of the current focus on lightening our carbon footprint revolves around transportation and heating issues, the modest little fabric all around you turns out to be from an industry …
OEcotextiles 