The textile and apparel industries have made significant strides in recent years to advance efforts to reduce the amount of potentially harmful chemicals used in the manufacturing process. Another effort toward sustainability in the sector involves a growing number of companies working on the age-old problem of textile recycling.

Researchers at North Carolina State University are exploring the possibility of using cottonseed oil to create non-allergenic, biodegradable products that can be used as finishing agents for cotton apparel. The research, which has shown promising results so far, is being funded by a $294,000 grant from the USDA.

Professors Richard Venditti and Sunkyu Park are heading the project.

“By developing these bio-based textile finishing agents and wet strength additives, we hope to provide more environmentally sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based products used in the textile and paper industries,” said Venditti in a university news release.

Finishing agents are chemicals applied to fabrics to reduce or eliminate wrinkles and to improve the quality and durability of fabrics. Textile manufacturers often use finishing agents that contain formaldehyde to produce wrinkle-resistant fabrics.

Venditti and Park have worked for the past two years with Cotton Incorporated and HeiQ ChemTex, which develops and manufactures specialty chemicals, to prepare the modified cottonseed oil and test it. They have created an emulsion — a mixture of cottonseed oil and water — for application on textiles and paper products.

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“We’ve done some preliminary work on fabrics and noticed some changes to properties like texture and softness,” Venditti said. “Right now, we’re looking at better defining its wrinkle-resistance, water-resistance and oil-resistance. But it shows a lot of potential.”

Eight states: California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington have taken action to eliminate PFAS, commonly referred to as “forever chemicals,” in carpets, rugs, apparel, textile furnishings, upholstered furniture, fabric treatments, and/or other textiles. That’s according to Safer States, a national alliance of environmental health organizations. Safer States has been working with major textile certifiers such as OEKO-TEX and Bluesign to address the entire class of PFAS chemicals in their standards.

Among the growing number of companies working to address the PFAS issue is Green Theme Technologies, an Albuquerque, N.M., company that is developing clean chemistries and water-free processes targeting the textile industry. The company’s products are being developed under the Empel platform. Green Theme Technologies is currently working with several textile mills and outdoor apparel brands.Several new companies have emerged on the recycling side. They include Refiberd, a company founded by two Carnegie Mellon graduates. They have developed a sorting technology, which they claim is capable of diverting 70% of textile manufacturing waste to high-value recyclers. Refiberd hopes to make a dent in the global textile waste problem, in which an estimated 186 million pounds of textile waste is discarded each year, much of which is landfilled or incinerated.

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