Textile Insight

H igh-profile issues such as climate change and pollution have heightened environmental awareness. As a result, sustainability has become increasingly more important across many different industries. Environmental sustainability means adopting practices that help preserve our natural resources as well as future generations' abilities to meet their own needs. 1 For the textile and apparel industry, sustainability involves the conservation of water, energy, and chemicals at every stage of textile production, and also the reduction of waste and environmental pollution when a product reaches the end of its useful life. Also starting to gain traction are investments in new methods that will allow textile products to enhance the environment around us, such as through composting. Historically, manufacturing systems have followed a linear "take, make, and waste" model — meaning that raw materials are taken from the earth, made into products, and disposed of as waste, filling landfills or polluting the environment. Textile products contribute to the U.S. waste stream, accounting for 8 percent of municipal waste sent to landfills. 2 Plastics certainly follow the linear "take, make, and waste" model. Oil is extracted from the earth and made into plastic polymer, which is used to manufacture products. Then, once a plastic product is discarded, it persists in the environment because conventional plastics (99.7 percent of all plastics produced) are not biodegradable. 3 Although many Americans believe in the importance of recycling plastic, 4 recycling has barely scratched the surface of the plastic waste problem. Less than 9 percent of plastic produced in the United States is recycled, while over 75 percent ends up in landfills. 5 Worse yet, plastic waste can break up into microplastic particles, which are now found throughout the environment and inside living organisms. 6 The most common source of microplastics is the plastic microfibers shed by synthetic fabrics. 7 In contrast to the linear model, circularity is an approach to reducing the environmental impact of textile products at the end of their useful lives by reusing them, recycling them, or returning them to the earth. Circularity is best achieved by designing and manufacturing products in ways that make this process as efficient as possible. 8 According to Dr. Jesse Daystar, vice president and chief sustainability officer for Cotton Incorporated, the goal is to create a "circular economy that is restorative and regenerative by design, and aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times." As a renewable biological product, cotton is ideal for a circular economy. Benefits of Biodegradability Products, materials, and textiles that are biodegradable play an important role in establishing a circular economy. Because cotton is grown from the earth and can return to the earth quickly and safely, under the right conditions, it is defined as a biodegradable fiber. Synthetic fibers, on the other hand, can take hundreds – even thousands – of years to decompose. 9 Research has shown that cotton biodegrades faster and more thoroughly than synthetic materials in a variety of different environments, such as wastewater, salt water, compost, and soil. 1011 Additionally, while cotton sheds tiny cotton fibers when being washed, and during its lifecycle in general, it does not shed harmful microplastics, like SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION Digging Deeper into the Circularity of Cotton Who We Are Cotton Incorporated is the research and marketing company for U.S. cotton growers and importers. Established in 1970 as a not-for-profit company, its mission is to increase the demand for and profitability of cotton. Cotton Incorporated's CottonWorks™ program is an extension of its global education and marketing efforts. This comprehensive, online resource provides textile professionals and students with the essential fiber-to-fashion knowledge, expert problem-solving insights, up-to-date research, and inspiration needed to navigate the future of cotton and textiles. It offers thorough resources via data and research, market and trend analysis, timely webinars, and informative videos. Through CottonWorks, users can create custom lists of content; and they also gain access to the FABRICAST™ collection, a fabric library featuring collections designed by Cotton Incorporated's product development team, including digital fabric files; exclusive cotton trend forecasts, researched and developed by Cotton Incorporated's trend forecasters; and CottonWorks workshops (per eligibility). CottonWorks was created by Cotton Incorporated and the Importer Support Program of the Cotton Board to help increase the demand for and profitability of cotton through research and promotion. Learn More Cotton Incorporated 6399 Weston Parkway Cary, NC (919) 678-2200 www.cottonworks.com All images courtesy of Cotton Incorporated 40 • Textile Insight ~ Fall 2023

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