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Making School Uniforms and Supplies Affordable

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Green Uniforms for Work?

Wednesday 28th of July 2010 06:30:50 PM

The textile industry is always working on new methods for producing yarns and threads. The focus the last few years has been heavily on developing “green” methods. Green textile production refers to the use of recycled materials and resource saving production methods.

Unfortunately the textile industry has not been particularly green in the past. That is because it takes a lot of natural resources to produce clothing and the by-products can be environmentally damaging unless disposal is carefully controlled. It takes a lot of water and dyes to produce those comfortable work uniforms you enjoy wearing.

The good news is that manufacturers are making some progress in greening up textile production. For example, the company Ecotec has developed a new yarn that is made from pre-consumer fabric scraps. The scraps are collected from the various manufacturing departments and put through a special process to turn them into usable yarn. The fabric scraps are first sorted by color. Then they are reprocessed into what is almost like a raw material. The new raw material is blended and spun to create the new “green” yarns.

Ecotec has earned a new designation for its efforts. It has been given the Control Union’s Global Recycle Standard. The new Ecotec yarns are made from material scraps that would have ended up in the landfills. Because the scraps are already dyed a color, they don’t require dying which lowers the use of chemicals in the process. There is less water used and fewer pollutants produced. The yarns are certified to be free of dozens of substances that may present a health hazard.

The new technology costs more than standard production methods but it is quite possible that all the printed t-shirts you wear one day will be “green”.

© Image by Robert Linder, www.sxc.hu/