Sustainable Denim Washing | Reason Behind Seeking Sustainable Denim Production

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Denim is one of the most polluting industries among all textile departments. Now a day’s, technologists are continuously trying to invent environmental and production friendly manufacturing facilities to avoid traditional procedures. Despite the ecological facts are involved this particular industry is growing rapidly than any other. Behind the giant denim industry the big issues are the huge quantity of secondhand trash, unusable stock, denim waste, high-consumption of water, hazardous chemicals and energy.

Denim is a dynamic, featuring field of fashion where the achievements of the science and new features of lifestyle are assumed in new styles. To understand the modern phenomenon of denim topic has to be accessed from different aspects. This field of fashion is rapidly growing business, thus continuous monitoring of the market is a must for all the professionals. 

Denim is also one of the biggest employers in the world. It is giving work to a lots of people: stakeholders in the textile, garment and fashion industry including small and medium enterprises and large companies, designers and creative personnel of leading global fashion houses and emerging brands, actors of the retail sector as well as there are huge interest of machinery makers, workers and technologists of the weaving mill and so on.

There is an effective cost saving aspect of sustainable denim project. In sustainability the uses of chemical and water are reduced along with energy reduction which is cost effective. For less chemical the extra cost is reducing and on the other hand less water gives less effluent which can help to save cost that involves in ETP management.

A recent study has shown that sustainable product has good quality in comparison overall conventional product. As example, for aggressive washes, where many of processes are involved, the more number of processes the more number of rejections will be, also falling of tearing strength is another concern.

The growing business of denim is becoming a threat to the environment and also unhygienic to the worker involved directly to washing. The uses of huge amount of water, hazardous chemicals and higher energy consumption are the key factors to deteriorate the condition of the environment. 

According to the prospect of reducing consumption of water, chemicals & energy and also to reduce impact of worker sustainability in denim washing has come to light in the world trend. Many of the big retailers are selling sustainable denim in the world market which is becoming more popular in EU and US market gradually.

To define sustainability we can say that this is the capability to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely. Sustainability has been expressed as meeting the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet human needs. 

Using the minimal resources for denim production like changing procedures or reducing one or two steps and even by using alternative chemicals & new technology are commonly treated as sustainability in denim washing. Eventually, cost of denim production may reduce if less water and bio degradable chemicals are used which is only possible through sustainable concept.

 Reason of seeking sustainability:

Global Aspects: Across the world 7.2 Billion Peoples in 2017 whereas 9 Billion people will be in 2050 or closer to that. To feed, give clothing and providing shelter for everyone does not come free. Everything has a cost. This cost to be brought by the environment.

According to total textile exchange, about 20% of industrial fresh water pollution comes from textile treatment and dyeing.

About 2700 liter of fresh water is used to make one cotton T-shirt. About 920 gallons water is used to make one jeans. Other textile products also consume huge amounts of energy and water in processing and finishing.

1 trillion kwh used by the global textile industry. This equals approximate 10% of global carbon impact.

Aspects of Bangladesh: It is estimated that in Bangladesh approximately 719 wet processing facilities including knit fabric dyeing and denim washing factories consume around 750 billion litres of groundwater annually. While in Bangladesh there are factories which are top of class, there are also indications of water consumption levels of 300 litres per kg of fabric – a figure which is approximately 3 times higher than the global average. 

High water consumption also comes with relatively high energy consumption, heating more water than strictly required in the dyeing process. This contributes to a set of water-related challenges, Bangladesh is also facing severe energy shortages. The country produces only about ¾ of its energy needs, requiring many fabric and garment manufacturers to generate their own. 

According to a study conducted by BUET (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) that was published in The Dailystar the Textile Industries would be dumping 20,300 crore liters of untreated wastewater into the countries water bodies every year from 2021 if the present situation goin on. Thus the pollution would be threatening fisheries, biodiversity and groundwater. 

The untreated effluents could instigate quick changes in the aquatic ecosystems and may affect the life of fisheries. The water bodies might face increase of temperature due to warm wastewater that discharges into them and cause to high impact on flora and fauna. Dhaka, Narayanganj and Gazipur belt of textile industries are major deliver of the wastewater to the nearly waterbodies. Referring to another study, it said textile industries near the Shitalakkhya river discharge their untreated dye with heavy metals into the river. 

To meet the export value $50 billion by 2021 the manufacturers are intended to enlarge their business volume that eventually impacts on high discharge of wastewater.According to the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, 1995 the textile dyeing and washing industries are in "Red Category Industry", that are treated as most polluting. 

There is stringent rule by the Department of Environment that ETP is must to run any wet processing facility but many of the factories are yet to install the waste water treatment plant as running the ETP is expensive, approximately tk 20-35 crore needs to install an ETP plant. Both chemical and biological ETP (Effluent Treatment Plant) is mandatory and it has to be functional as well.

With this realization of need to have sustainable products and looking at huge impact of  textile industry on the environment – of which denim is the vital portion – the natural way forward is only devising new products, ways and processes which can help in reducing the environmental footprint of textiles. 

The main three pillars of the concept of Sustainable Denim Production are -

• Environmental
• Social
• Economical

Taking this in consideration there are some methods, processes and technology are being applied to reduce the impact and to make sustainable Denim product. Some of them are as follows:

• Single bath method
• Ensure front loading machines that consume less whater
• Equip laundry with modern washing machinery that enables to wash denim at low M:L ratio
• Use water meter to 100% washing machine
• Use EIM which is powered by Jeanologia
• Ozone Fading
• Use of green chemical
• Ice blasting
• Use of laser
• Install functional chemical and biological ETP

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