Thinking Outside the Box: Advance Denim Discusses their Latest Sustainable Dyeing Innovation
Developing sustainable denim is not only about using responsible fibres and materials — one of the key challenges lies in the dyeing and finishing processes of textiles, in which the industry accounts for 17-25% of all industrial water pollution. Seven years ago, Greenpeace initiated the Detox my Fashion Campaign to pressure the global textile industry — the second largest polluter of freshwater globally — to eliminate the use and discharge of hazardous chemicals.
Chemical management and transparency impacts every element of the supply chain: the presence of toxic chemicals is both damaging to human health and nature, but also makes materials and garments unsafe for recycling — preventing them from use in a circular design system.
Advance Denim, the oldest denim manufacturer in China and recent Future Fabrics Expo exhibitor, has an important impact on the industry with an annual output of up to 40 million yards of fabric. These production effects on the environment can be huge, which is why Advance Denim is committed to clean denim manufacturing by dedicating innovation and investments that improve infrastructure and systems for production.
Advance Denim’s latest innovation is “Big Box Dyeing”, which reduces the number of wash boxes traditionally used for dyeing denim down to only one big box. Conventional indigo dyeing often takes 8-13 separate dye baths to complete the dye process, which uses a tremendous amount of water and chemicals. Big Box Dyeing has many sustainable advantages which includes no water consumption in the dyeing process, no wastewater produced, less chemicals, fewer gas emissions, less energy. To make the technique of Big Box Dyeing possible, Advance Denim sought the help of an Italian manufacturer to custom design a machine that uses nitrogen technology. The technology is made further sustainable with Advance Denim’s yarn-dyeing process, which does not require yarn preparation or the rinsing of yarns post-dye.
Big Box Dyeing results in the popular vintage effect seen on denim, and a consistent clean indigo shade across the fabric end-to-end. Advance Denim has developed three shades for a selection of their products, but are working to create a wider range of colours that can include sulphur dyes.
Watch the Big Box Dyeing Video here:
In terms of dyestuffs, all chemicals used by Advance Denim conform to ZDHC standards (ZDHC, which stands for “Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals”, launched a Roadmap to Zero programme that helps guide value chains in the textile and apparel industry towards the use of safer chemistry for a cleaner planet). While normal dyestuffs can also work with Big Box Dyeing, Advance Denim offers safer chemical inputs which can be used in conjunction with the technology, such as aniline-free liquid indigo from the Archroma range that produces a deep dark, true indigo shade similar to traditional dyeing. Brands can also choose to wash down fabric to the many different colour levels of denim, without having to change their wash formulas to mimic indigo. Wastewater produced from finishing passes through a separation treatment where indigo dye residue is filtered out and clean water is 100% recycled back into the finishing range for a closed loop.
We asked Enrico Forin from Advance Denim to tell us more about the company’s Big Box innovation and their upcoming plans for a sustainable future for denim.
1.) Can you provide a brief outline about the latest sustainable products from Advance Denim?
We revealed our latest development Big Box Dyeing for the first time during the last Future Fabrics Expo, which is a revolutionary new technique to dye indigo. It drastically reduces the consumption of water, wastewater, energy, chemicals and reduces gas emissions, since it uses just one, deep box. This machine was only installed just a couple of months before the Expo, so since then we have continued to develop and improve our technology because our target was to be able to dye without any water usage. This is exactly what happened recently, much to our satisfaction. Now we are able to dye yarns with indigo without any usage of water and without discharging any wastewater, all while still making remarkable savings in energy, gas and chemicals. We just use a very small amount of water to clean the machine when we need to dye a different shade. This water will be anyway sent to our water treatment plant where will be cleaned and recycle.
2.) This was Advance Denim’s second time exhibiting at the Future Fabrics Expo. How has the sustainability realm changed? Are the conversations different than before and have sourcing habits changed?
We saw that visitors coming to the show were more and more interested to see what’s new in terms of technologies, products, and how we moved forward in order to produce in a sustainable way. The interest is high when it comes to new sustainable fibres, even more when in combination with new technologies, like Big Box, that makes even better products for brands or designers looking into sustainable solutions.
3.) Advance Denim recently joined ZDHC Roadmap to Zero. Can you tell us more about your commitment to phase out hazardous chemicals?
Replacing “old generation” chemicals is something that we started long time ago as soon as chemicals companies began to develop and offer safe products. It is a process that took a while since every single chemical need to be tested in different conditions, and in most cases they need to react with other products to verify compatibility. We are buying and often importing products from well-known, internationally recognised chemicals companies which we know are also committed to developing safe chemicals. Of course, the process is not over….we often have periodic meetings with those companies in order to share information and discuss how to improve formulas for responsible production.
4.) What are Advance Denim’s goals and plans moving forward?
Last year, we’ve committed to a five-year plan to use sustainable fibres in 90% of our collection by 2023 (currently, sustainable fibres in our collections range from 40-70%). This is related to fabric content, which is not the only way to be sustainable. We will continue to invest in new equipments and technologies with the goal to reduce as much natural resources usage as possible while maintaining full production processes. The dream is to create a Micro Mill……we strongly believe that gradually we will get there!
For more information about Advance Denim, visit http://www.advancedenim.com/
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