by Jay Bolus, MBDC Director of Project Operations

In July's monthly feature story, we described how the Next Industrial Revolution is beginning where the first Industrial Revolution did-in the textile industry. Leaders in the textile industry are pursuing a variety of solutions for making synthetic fabrics 'sustainable.' So how do we make an environmentally intelligent polyester fabric?

A fabric is made up of a number of things: fiber, dyes, additives, and residues of process chemicals. Each of these needs to be optimized for safety and sustainability to create an eco-effective product. Right now there is a particular market interest in sustainable fiber sources. So how do these contribute to a comprehensive design approach? Is it better to use recycled 'waste' feedstock (like PET soda bottles) or the safest primary materials? Or is it always better to use renewable material resources?

Technical and Biological Nutrients

In the regenerative design paradigm Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart are articulating, the key to intelligent synthetic fibers (and fabrics made from them) is the design of materials that can circulate perpetually in a production/use/recovery cycle-cradle-to-cradle life cycles. This means petroleum-based synthetics that can be recycled perpetually and safely, or plant-based fibers that can safely return to the soil to nourish new plant growth. The chemicals used to treat fibers, as well as the base fibers themselves, affect these possibilities.

Of course, we're still early in the development of cradle-to-cradle synthetic materials and textiles. We're only beginning to put systems in place to meet commercial demands in environmentally intelligent ways. Some of the solutions are being developed within the framework of Eco-Efficiency-trying to minimize the environmental damage of traditional industrial systems. So let's look at the options in terms of Eco-Effectiveness-the strategy for designing systems that are regenerative from the outset, instead of damaging.

PET—Recycled or New?

One environmental strategy for reducing the overall consumption of petroleum is recycling PET from bottles into polyester fiber for textiles. Recycling soda bottles into high quality fabric fibers excels in one of the key buying and design criteria of the eco-efficient movement-recycled content. It's a step in the direction of cradle-to-cradle production.

While realizing eco-efficient benefits, the production of textiles from recycled PET (essentially a 'grave-to-cradle' solution) is limited by the drawbacks of its feedstock. Most PET is produced using an antimony-based catalyst, a problematic heavy metal. This creates environmental and human health risks, particularly during production, disposal, and recycling. Current recycling methods don't eliminate these risks.

Recent technological developments have provided cost-effective and environmentally benign catalysts, and eco-effective polyester fabric is now available. The first of these is Victor Innovatex's new Eco-Intelligent™ Polyester (co-developed with MBDC and Designtex), which uses PET fiber from a titanium-based catalyst to create a fabric that is recyclable and designed for safety during production, use, and recycling.

The use of recycled materials has clear environmental merits, and future technological advances may provide cost-effective methods for removing the antimony residues from PET during recycling. Eco-effective design for maximum quality begins by positively selecting the safest, most intelligent, highest performing materials. Today, this seems to favor virgin, safely catalyzed PET for some applications.

Biopolymers

Plastics made from plants rather than petroleum—known as biopolymers—are technologically still in infancy, but offer good performance and are poised for commercial production soon. Biopolymers like PLA are promoted for their important environmental benefits, including their reliance on renewable material sources, biodegradability, and recyclability.

The end-of-use and renewable-feedstock benefits are clearly promising, but there are drawbacks to biopolymers, too. The production of biopolymers like PLA from corn requires much more energy than the production of many types of plastic from virgin petroleum sources. Most of the energy that fuels the production process is non-renewable, and the fertilizers used in the production of the corn are also derived mostly from petroleum. In the end, producing biopolymers still consumes significant amounts of fossil fuels.

Additionally, most mature biopolymer technologies use genetically modified corn to produce their material building blocks, instead of petroleum. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) raise a host of ethical and environmental issues, separate from material production and use, which have yet to be thoroughly explored. And reliance on food crops like corn to produce plastics seems odd, while billions of people are without adequate food. (Fortunately, people are researching ways to produce polymers from a variety of crops. Perhaps eventually microorganisms can become polymer factories, without displacing arable land.)

From an eco-effective point of view, the continued development of biopolymers is encouraging. Biopolymers like PLA will never be a large-scale substitute for petroleum-based plastics (not even their supporters think they will), but as the food source and total energy balance issues are addressed, these materials could play an important role in the polymer market.

Conclusion

Intelligent systems for the production of eco-effective synthetics are essential to the prosperity of the Next Industrial Revolution. The base polymers described above are clearly an important part of producing next generation intelligent textiles, along with safe and sustainable dyes, additives, other chemicals and processes. We are developing systems to address all of these materials through all stages of their life cycles-a critical need. Additionally, MBDC and others (Victor Innovatex and Designtex, initially) have begun to establish what we're calling The Polyester Coalition to help build these systems to close material loops and build consensus for intelligent, emerging industry standards. The future is looking hopeful.

Links:

	"How Green Are Green Plastics?," Scientific American, Aug. 2000
	"Hope Springs in Kernels," Green@Work, Mar/Apr 2001 (interview with Cargill Dow president Randy Howard, on his company's biopolymer development)
	Victor Innovatex, Eco-Intelligence™ Initiatives
	Designtex

Previous Monthly Features:

May 2001, "The Five Steps to Reinventing the World" (Step 1: Free of...)

June 2001, "Positive Design Decisions in an Imperfect Market" (Step 2: Personal Preference)

July 2001, "Textile Mills Lead Another Revolution"