Dow and Ralph Lauren Corporation have co-developed a step-by-step manual detail on how to use ECOFAST™ Pure, a cationic cotton treatment developed by Dow. Ralph Lauren has become the first brand to use ECOFAST™ Pure to optimise and implement the technology in its cotton dyeing operations as part of its new ‘Color on Demand platform’.
What is the edge?
Conventional fabric dyeing processes require trillions of litres of water each year, generating roughly 20 per cent of the world’s wastewater. Pretreating fabric with ECOFAST™ Pure helps significantly reduce the amount of water, chemicals and energy needed to colour cotton, by enabling up to 90 per cent less process chemicals, 50 per cent less water, 50 per cent less dyes and 40 per cent less energy without sacrificing colour or quality.
Ralph Lauren has pioneered this dyeing system’s application and has begun integrating ‘Color on Demand’ into its supply chain earlier this year and first launched the product utilising ECOFAST™ Pure as part of the company’s Team USA collection for the Olympic & Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020. Designed to help address water scarcity and pollution caused by cotton dyeing, ‘Color on Demand’ is a multi-phased system with a clear ambition to deliver over time the world’s first scalable zero wastewater cotton dyeing system. By 2025, the brand aims to use this platform to dye more than 80 per cent of its solid cotton products.
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The proven benefits of ECOFAST™ Pure
After a series of experiments and by partnering with Ralph Lauren, Dow has proved that its sustainable processes can make fashionable garments a reality—without sacrificing colour and quality. The ECOFAST™ Pure is an award-winning technology that helps make a bold difference as a cationic cotton chemistry used before the fabric dyeing process. ECOFAST™ Pure doesn’t have the unpleasant odour of other cationic pretreatments and can help deliver up to 90 per cent less chemicals, including dyes, salt and other additives; 50 per cent less water with fewer rinses; 50 per cent less dye with improved uptake and 40 per cent less energy with room temperature dyeing.
Dow believes that sustainability shouldn’t come at the sacrifice of colour or quality. ECOFAST™ Pure is compatible with popular direct and reactive dyes and delivers comparable or enhanced colour fastness. Dow also offers a global technical network with local support to supervise, customise and optimise production processes with their ECOFAST™ product. ECOFAST™ Pure also meets the ZDHC Roadmap to Zero Programme and Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL).
Continuing the efforts
Continuing its partnership with Ralph Lauren, Dow wants to extend this facility of sustainable dyeing to the industry. The ECOFAST™ Pure will help brands achieve comparable or better colorfastness compared to the typical dyeing process and given Dow’s global network with local support to supervise, customise and optimise production processes, brands can rely on safe-handling of training, resource savings measurement, levelling support and on-site liquor testing award winning technology. ECOFAST™ Pure is a cationic pre-treatment that helps dyes attract and bond better to cotton. This technology is optimised through pad application before the dyeing process. Typical textiles that are pre-treated include knit and woven fabric, denim and garments.
Cotton dyeing is a resource-intensive process and puts strain on local waterbodies. A large amount of water is used in the dyeing process – up to 5 trillion litres a year, or nearly enough to supply all of humanity with drinking water. Added to this, significant amounts of chemicals and dyes are needed to get the desired colours consumers expect. Textile mills account for 20 per cent of industrial water pollution globally. Wastewater from the dyeing process can be polluting and requires costly treatment, and these challenges are found in regions that already face water scarcity.
Keeping this problem in mind, Dow planned out a reform path and wanted to nurture its environment-friendly dyeing techniques as a collaborative effort with the textile industry. Cotton Incorporated had earlier approached Dow for the same. They wanted help to scale the cotton technology to support more sustainable textile dyeing. It turned out that Dow was already developing a similar technology that had improved performance, and they were looking for help too. Leveraging Cotton Incorporated’s industry expertise and Dow’s material science knowledge, the two worked together to understand and validate the benefits of the patented ECOFAST™ Pure Sustainable Textile Treatment. This was done way before Dow collaborated with Ralph Lauren.
After two successful collaborations and one brand’s collection showing extreme positive results, Dow is now seriously eyeing collaboration and believes that this is the only way the ECOFAST™ Pure can become an industry-wide sustainable dyeing application, reducing the usage of harmful chemicals and dyes all across categories.