The reflection and notes of sustainable fabrics

This week we had a really serious issue in this course - sustainability. 

  In order of coping with the big amount of consumption in modern life,  the entire manufacturers have to use the chemicals to decrease the time of whole process of making textiles and also lower the price of textiles . For example, using too much pesticide during cropping, dying fabric with chemicals and making water pollution , wasting the energies from process and transportations, and the rest of the fabrics can't be treated with a sustainable way. So, this is really urgent to think and monitor the details of the whole manufacture procedure. 

 There are some methods that can be recognized as sustainable textiles design.There are 6 R's in textile design- recycle, reuse, reduce, refuse, rethink, and repair. First, Up to 90% of products environmental impact is decide at the design stage.Using a considerable method like using the most or entire of fabrics to low down the wastes of fabrics .Second, reusing the unwanted textiles by reproducing them. There are some cases like Natalie Chanin, Marcia Ganem and Anita Ahuja from three different continents- three textile designers that are creating a sustainable business in local communities by using traditional methods- hand-stitch or nature dye and recomposing the unwanted fabrics to high-priced products again. I think these three cases are more close to real life that they can insist in sustainable design and gain more profits from low price materials. Third, finding and using the new materials is an another option such as spider silk, soya bean fibre, sweetcorn fibre and wood pulp. Although biofibres are made from new plant materials and animals and completely sustainable, they are hard to produce massively in a short time. We should put more efforts on those fibre. Forth, Veronika kapsali, a London- based designer , creates a new method by observing natures and makes the her biomimetic fabrics have its own temperature adaptive system to human body. Fifth, from the idea cradle to cradle, recycling the clothing and textiles is a good way to encourage every people to do. Cotton, hemp, wool, those traditional materials are easily recyclable. In the other hand, the synthetic fibre can be reproduced by heat and transferred the look again. What's more, recycling plastic can also make into fibre but it is difficult to keep the whole fabrics into a color.

  There are some more fantastic works are made for sustainability.This issue should be urgently raised up in society and invent more metrologies to address the massively produce in a short time but a environmental protection's way.

// reference//

Sustainable Textile Design by Ridgwell Press

Textile Futures fashion, design and technology by Bradley Quinn

Textile Visionaries Innovation and Sustainability in Textile Desing by Bradley Quinn

Textile Innovation interactive, contemporary and traditional materials by Ros Hibbert