In 2012, more than half of India\u2019s $1.25 billion worth of textile exports to the U.S. came from the southern city of Tiruppur. While the business has brought economic benefits, its environmental and social costs are many. Downstream of Tiruppur and its more than 300 textile factories, the Noyyal River has become foamy and discolored. Pollution from this industry is blamed for causing illness among local people and sapping the productivity of nearby farms.
\nTiruppur is not an isolated case. According to the World Bank, 20% of water pollution globally is caused by textile processing. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as environmental groups say parts of India and China are among the most polluted.
\nMajor chemical companies as well as start-ups are responding by developing less harmful textile-processing chemicals. But such substances are often more expensive than ones in use. Lower-cost reagents and better enforcement by regulators are required, textile chemical executives say, along with a shift in consumer behavior away from opting for the cheapest products.
\nThe textile industry uses more than 8,000 chemicals to make the 400 billion m2 of fabric sold annually around the world. Many are toxic and persist in the environment. They include heavy-metal-rich dyes and fixing agents, bleaches, solvents, and detergents.
\nMaking textiles is also a water-intensive business. Producing a pair of jeans requires about 1,800 gal of water; a T-shirt takes 700 gal. Treating such large volumes of waste water is costly\u2014if it is treated at all.
\nPollution also can occur after clothing leaves the factory. Outdoor gear is often stain- and waterproofed with perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), but these additives can detach during use. The PFCs or their breakdown products end up in the environment where they can be persistent, bioaccumulative, and carcinogenic hazards.
\nClothing makers were stung into action in July 2011 by \u201cDirty Laundry,\u201d a report by the environmental group Greenpeace that claimed they source their textiles from low-cost producers in developing countries while turning a blind eye to the pollution this generates. By November 2011, several major apparel producers and retail organizations had come together to form Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals.
\nZDHC\u2019s members, which now number 25, have committed to eliminating release of toxic substances into waterways by 2020. Members include Adidas, Gap, H&M, Nike, Puma, and the Taiwanese dyestuffs maker Everlight Chemical.
\nTextile chemical giant Archroma, which has annual sales of about $2 billion, is involved in several working groups within ZDHC. \u201cWe believe ZDHC will really promote the use of safer alternative chemicals,\u201d says Carole Mislin, head of product stewardship for Archroma.
\nArchroma says it sells a series of textile processing chemicals that have a lower environmental impact. The firm is also working to train textile producers in techniques that minimize wastewater generation and energy consumption.
\nFor Greenpeace, though, change is not happening fast enough. In August, the NGO published another report with a video showing how well-known outdoor clothing firms are still using PFCs and that these compounds are now found in locations far from human populations.
\n\u201cThe earlier Greenpeace report and latest report have caused interest from apparel and clothing producers to really take off,\u201d says M\u00e5rten Hellberg, chief executive officer of OrganoClick, a seven-year-old Swedish start-up that has developed an alternative to PFCs.
\nOrganoClick describes its PFC replacement, named OrganoTex, as a long-chain alkane-based coating. The firm says it\u2019s made from biomaterials using a catalyst derived from small organic molecules found in fruit. If the alkane breaks away from the textile, it exposes chemical bonds that are open to degradation by bacteria, Hellberg says.
\nOrganoTex matches PFCs on cost, according to OrganoClick. \u201cPeople are really keen to come to us and start doing tests,\u201d Hellberg says. The firm is due to increase its capacity for the material 10-fold in the next few weeks when it opens a 20,000-metric ton-per-year plant in T\u00e4by, Sweden.
\nArchroma and other big textile chemical producers such as DyStar, Huntsman Corp., and Protex are also developing PFC-free waterproofing agents. Archroma\u2019s technology is based on a wax of undisclosed origin. Protex uses acrylics.
\nAdditionally, Swiss firm Beyond Surface Technologies (BST) is \u201cmonths away\u201d from completing a project to develop a PFC substitute, CEO Matthias Foessel tells C&EN. Earlier this year Patagonia, a major outdoor clothing company, invested about $1 million in BST to enable the firm to accelerate R&D on a range of environmentally benign textile chemicals.
\nBST has been adapting chemicals that are already in use in the fields of cosmetics, personal care, food, and food hygiene. \u201cThese sectors are all ahead of the textiles sector in using renewable, safer chemicals,\u201d Foessel says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2012, more than half of India\u2019s $1.25 billion worth of textile exports to the U.S. came from the southern city of Tiruppur. While the business has brought economic benefits, its environmental and social costs are many. Downstream of Tiruppur and its more than 300 textile factories, the Noyyal River has become foamy and discolored. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[9862,11169,11172,11167,11166,2204,11168,12926,3545,2719,11171,2796,11165],"class_list":["post-29910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-adidas-group","supplier-archroma","supplier-beyond-surface-technologies-ag-bst","supplier-everlight-chemical-industrial-co","supplier-gap-inc","supplier-greenpeace-international","supplier-hennes-mauritz-gmbh-hm","supplier-huntsman-corporation","supplier-nike","supplier-organoclick-ab","supplier-protex-new-advanced-textiles-gmbh","supplier-puma","supplier-zero-discharge-of-hazardous-chemicals-zdhc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29910"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=29910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}