Ralph Lauren, Dow Aim to Transform How Fashion Industry Dyes Cotton – WWD

Ralph Lauren Corp. and Dow launched an in depth guide for the textile business as we speak on the right way to dye cotton extra sustainably and extra successfully than ever earlier than utilizing Ecofast Pure Sustainable Textile Remedy.

With this guide, Ralph Lauren and Dow are open-sourcing this improved dyeing course of to encourage adoption within the textile business and serving to standardize a extra sustainable and environment friendly cotton dyeing system for constructive surroundings affect.

The codeveloped, step-by-step guide particulars the right way to use Ecofast Pure, a cationic cotton remedy developed by Dow, with present dyeing tools. Ralph Lauren is the primary model to make use of Ecofast Pure. The guide is free, and Ecofast Pure is obtainable for buy from Dow.

Ralph Lauren started integrating Coloration on Demand into its provide chain earlier this 12 months and launched product utilizing Ecofast Pure as a part of the corporate’s Crew USA assortment for the Olympic & Paralympic Video games Tokyo 2020. Designed to assist handle water shortage and air pollution attributable to cotton dyeing, Coloration on Demand is a multiphased system with the purpose to ship over time the world’s first scalable zero wastewater cotton dyeing system.

By 2025, Ralph Lauren goals to make use of the Coloration on Demand platform to dye greater than 80 % of its strong cotton merchandise.

In April, Lauren mentioned it had partnered with Dow to optimize and implement the know-how in its cotton dyeing operations as a part of its new Coloration on Demand platform. They mentioned on the time they had been collectively growing an in depth guide and had been open-sourcing the primary section of Coloration on Demand.

Talking in April on the Bloomberg Inexperienced Summit, Patrice Louvet, chief govt officer of Lauren, mentioned it was their hope and expectation to see broad adoption of Coloration on Demand, “In order that altogether as an business we are able to remodel water stewardship, wherever we function. And that this additionally serves as a catalyst for extra innovation like this that positively impacts each our business and the planet.”

The guide notes that textile dyeing is the second largest reason for water air pollution on this planet. “Dyeing additionally consumes 5 trillion liters of water annually, which is sort of sufficient to produce all humanity with ingesting water. By lowering the water, chemical substances, dye and power required to paint cotton textiles, we will help manufacturers meet sustainability targets whereas additionally addressing local weather change, water air pollution and water shortage,” in keeping with the guide.

In truth, typical material dyeing processes that require trillions of liters of water generate roughly 20 % of the world’s wastewater. Pretreating material with Ecofast Pure helps scale back the quantity of water, chemical substances and power wanted to paint cotton, by enabling as much as 90 % fewer course of chemical substances, 50 % much less water, 50 % fewer dyes and 40 % much less power with out sacrificing colour or high quality.

“As style provide chains look to recuperate from impacts of the pandemic, there’s a important window to construct extra sustainable practices into manufacturing processes,” mentioned Mary Draves, chief sustainability officer at Dow. “By collaborating as we speak to scale a much less resource-intensive dyeing course of, we will help handle urgent challenges like local weather change and water resiliency, in the long run.”

Halide Alagoz, chief product and sustainability officer at Ralph Lauren, added: “If we need to shield our planet for the brand new technology, now we have to create scalable options which have by no means been thought-about earlier than. This requires deep and generally surprising collaboration and a willingness to interrupt down the boundaries of exclusivity. We’re proud to have partnered with Dow on this innovation and to share it brazenly with our business, with the hope that it’ll assist remodel how we protect and use water in our international provide chains.”

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Ralph Lauren Seeks to Transform How Fashion Industry Dyes Cotton