In 1993, Swiss mill Rohner
Textil AG and its CEO, Albin Kaelin, began
working with William McDonough, Michael Braungart,
and DesignTex
to set a new standard of environmental quality
for furniture textiles. The result of that project,
the biological nutrient fabric Climatex® Lifecycle™,
won award after award, became a commercial success,
and has come to symbolize ecologically intelligent
design. After such a revolutionary success, where
does a company like Rohner Textil look for growth?
Identifying the Challenge
"The success of Climatex Lifecycle in the
US was quite impressive," Kaelin recalls,
"but in Europe the success was moderate,
mainly because architects could not specify the
fabric on large projects otherwise they would
have infringed the law of flameretardency requirements."
So he set his sights on a greater challenge for
Rohner Textil: an equally healthy flame retardant
fabric that would meet the strictest regulations
of the transportation industries.
Could McDonough and Braungart's Cradle to Cradle
Design approach meet the high performance
characteristics required without using the persistent,
toxic chemicals typically found in flame retardant
fabrics?
 The
contract furniture business today must respond
to ever more complex fire regulations for hotels,
restaurants, theaters, sport stadiums, offices,
and residential areas. Regulations vary from country
to country, especially in transportation applications
such as airplanes, trains, and buses. But some
countries' policies are also increasingly requiring
materials to be purchased according to ecological
criteria. Kaelin saw these apparently competing
trends as a design and business opportunity—a
chance to once again prove that intelligent design
can overcome apparent contradictions to create
new standards of quality.
In 1996, Kaelin and Rohner Textil again engaged
MBDC's Michael Braungart and his German scientific
consultancy, EPEA,
to co-develop the product, assessing chemicals
and materials using the Cradle to Cradle Design
Protocol and helping identify and work with suppliers.
"I always want to challenge the limits and
try to achieve goals with a fair attitude of doing
business," says Kaelin. "The big challenge
is to find people who feel comfortable to share
their knowledge or their intelligence with the
network or part of the network, being sure that
their integrity is guaranteed. This often leads
to contradictions like chemical companies opening
their books to environmental institutes which
were founded by former Greenpeace activists [EPEA]."
Research and Development
To maintain the patented climate control technology
of Climatex, the design team retained the wool
fiber and unique weaving process of Climatex Lifecycle,
and began to identify other fibers for the blend.
In place of Climatex Lifecycle's ramie, Rohner
and EPEA began working with Lenzing, a renowned
fiber manufacturer in Austria, to assess and optimize
a beech-wood-based cellulose fiber better suited
to the project's requirements. Lenzing worked
with EPEA and Rohner Textil to ensure that the
fiber would meet performance requirements, as
well as the Protocol's human and ecological health
standards for materials and manufacturing processes.
The flame retardant used in the fiber required
further research in cooperation with its manufacturer,
Clariant. Information Clariant provided about
the chemical composition of the flame retardant
made it a promising candidate for use in a biological
nutrient fiber, but the Cradle to Cradle Design
Protocol required still more data to fully characterize
the human and ecological health of the substance.
Rohner and Clariant funded the additional laboratory
trials required to complete the assessment and
optimization of the retardant.
Lenzing's research and development process yielded
a new, high performance fiber it calls Redesigned
LenzingFR™, which it produces exclusively for
Rohner Textil and its licensees. The new fiber
meets the Protocol's requirement for the full
understanding of its chemical composition and
its human and environmental health effects, in
production as well as in use and post-use phases.
And the new fiber actually has performance advantages
over conventional flame retardant systems that
coat textiles with flame retardant chemicals.
Redesigned LenzingFR is manufactured with the
flame retardant agent locked inside the fiber,
so it won't wear off the surface.
The new wool and Redesigned LenzingFR fabric
uses the dye chemicals positively identified for
their ecological safety in the Climatex Lifecycle
project, in collaboration with chemical company
Ciba Specialty Chemicals. As with Climatex Lifecycle,
the choices for colors and designs are virtually
unlimited, except for the most brilliant colors
and pure black.
A New Product that Redefines
Safety
In 2001, after four years of work with EPEA and
other partners in the project, Rohner Textil began
offering the new product to the market—Climatex®
LifeguardFR™, "redesigned for safety"—extending
their successful Climatex line of biological nutrient
fabrics. And Climatex LifeguardFR meets the ambitious
objectives Kaelin outlined at the start of the
project. Its comfort performance is equal to all
other Climatex products, which lead the industry.
It meets the most stringent flame retardant tests
worldwide, even for aircraft. And it does so as
a safe, healthy biological nutrient that can replenish
soil and ecosystems after its use as fabric.
In Europe, Rohner Textil markets the new product
to contract and residential markets, and its licensee,
Lantal, markets to the aviation and other transportation
industries; Victor
Innovatex is the exclusive licensee offering
the fabric in the North American commercial market.
Continually Embracing New Challenges
 Kaelin
and his team are justifiably proud of these results,
but they're also pushing still further to extend
the project's accomplishments. Rohner Textil is
now exploring secondary markets for the trimmings
of Climatex LifeguardFR—applications that
will take full advantage of the flame retardant
performance of the material, as well as its environmentally
attributes. These may include felt lining for
panels or walls, flame retardant isolation materials,
woven flame retardant blankets for private use
or in public transportation (night-trains, airplanes,
busses).
"In a mature industry in one of the most
expensive countries," Kaelin notes, "innovation
and leadership are the only survival strategies
you can proceed with as a manager."
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