The most recent issue of Ecotextile News had an article about “sustainable luxury”[1] and it got me thinking. The article asked the question whether “luxury” and “sustainability” were opposing concepts. One would think so. Although luxury and sustainability both focus on rarity and beauty, both have durability at the heart of the concept. Just look …
A hot topic in the media right now is the toxicity of chemical flame retardants that are in our furniture and are migrating out into our environment. Tests have shown that Americans carry much higher levels of these chemicals in their bodies than anyone else in the world, with children in California containing some of …
Let’s begin our review of chemicals used in textile processing with the one chemical that is used most often and in far greater quantity than any other: salt. That’s right. Common table salt, the kind you probably use every day. But in the quantities used by this industry it becomes a monster – we’ll get …
I just tried to find out more about Project UDesign, a competition sponsored by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Cargill, Toray Industries and Century Furniture. The goal is to produce a chair that is both “sustainable and sellable.” It is targeted to be the next “ eco friendly wing chair” on the …
In 1970, Toray Industries colleagues Dr. Toyohiko Hikota and Dr. Miyoshi Okamoto created the world’s first micro fiber as well as the process to combine those fibers with a polyurethane foam into a non-woven structure – which the company trademarked as Ultrasuede®. In April 2009, Toray announced “a new environmentally responsible line of products which …
Earth Day is coming up and I am having a hard time with climate change. It’s such a big, complicated issue. Climate change, according to Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), is inherently abstract, scientifically complex, and globally diffused in causes and consequences. People have a hard time grasping the concept, let …
Here we are in the 21st century, with its acute global issues of over-population, loss of natural habitat, carbon emissions and pollution of all kinds — in a nutshell the specter of diminishing resources and climate change. What’s a good architect to do? Some are saying that fabric structures – that ancient way of providing …
Water. Our lives depend on it. It’s so plentiful that the Earth is sometimes called the blue planet – but freshwater is a remarkably finite resource that is not evenly distributed everywhere or to everyone. The number of people on our planet is growing fast, and our water use is growing even faster. About 1 …
I have been saying for years that fabric is the forgotten product. People just don’t seem to care about what their fabric choices do to them or to the environment. (Quick, what fiber is your shirt/blouse made of? What kinds of fibers do you sleep on?) They are too busy to do research, or they’re …
I thought we’d take a look at the dyeing process because so many people ask if we use “natural” dyes. The answer is no, we don’t (although we’re not entirely objecting to natural dyes), and I hope the next two blogs will explain our position! Let’s first take a look at what makes the dyes …
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