Smart Eco-Friendly Textile Manufacturing and Sustainability

Taipei Innovative Textile Application Show (TITAS)

The 21st edition of the show, held in October 2017, attracted a record 383 companies from around the world to meet these Eco-friendly textile manufacturers. This rising international recognition of Taiwan’s expertise in Eco-friendly production methods and functional fabrics is replicated in the popularity of the annual Taipei Innovative Textile Application Show.

According to the Taiwan Textile Federation (TTF), Taiwan was home to 4,361 textiles companies employing more than 142,000 people in 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available. According to TTF President Justin Huang, innovation and progression are some of the key elements in the victory of regional textile companies.
Nowadays, virtually all major global brands want their products to convey an Eco-friendly image to consumers. So, none of the industry players can afford to ignore environmental issues.

Regular improvements in production processes and technologies have helped firms remain at the forefront of two major trends: smart Eco-friendly textile manufacturing and sustainability. Typically, it is known that the traditional coloring process requires a huge amount of water and generates significant effluent discharges. So, Eco-friendly textile production mainly targets to reduce pollution by using less amount of water in dyeing.

Taiwan companies give the effort to embrace a variety of greener methods, including solution and supercritical carbon dioxide dyeing, as well as digital textile printing.
A textile industry leader in sustainable approaches, Libolon Group created its own brand Ecoya in 2006 for yarns colored using solution dyeing, a technique that consists of adding hues to synthetic fibers while they are still in a liquid state. The yarns, the product of more than two years of R&D, require about 90 percent less water to dye compared with regular processes, which involve dipping fabrics into pigments.

Taipei-based Far Eastern New Century Corp. (FENC), another leader in eco-friendly solutions for sustainable fabrics and textiles, has pioneered supercritical CO2 dyeing at a plant co-established with U.S. apparel firm Nike Inc. in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City. This eco-friendly technique employs pressurized recycled CO2 instead of water in the production process. In addition to eliminating water use, it reduces the amount of dye needed by about two-thirds in comparison with conventional practices.