Green environmental protection natural fiber interpretation (I): cotton

Release time:

2023-02-13

Under the trend of sustainable development, low-carbon environmental protection fiber has become one of the development themes of the textile industry. Because of its unique properties, natural fiber has become an important category. This column focuses on the interpretation of cotton, linen and wool in natural fibers from the perspective of green environmental protection attributes, and expounds its development status and trend.

As a kind of natural fiber, cotton has biodegradable and renewable properties, among which color cotton, organic cotton and recycled cotton can reflect the ecological and environmental protection properties of cotton.

Natural colored cotton is the use of genetic modification technology to cultivate cotton, cotton plants by implanting different color genes, so that cotton peach in the growth process has a different color. In addition to the color of colored cotton fiber, other morphological structures are basically consistent with white cotton fiber. The whole process of colored cotton from planting, textile to garment strictly follows the green production standards, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides can not be used in the planting process. There is no need for traditional processes such as bleaching, scouring and dyeing in the processing process. The prepared garments do not contain formaldehyde, azo dyes and heavy metals. This reflects the green environmental protection attribute of colored cotton.

After nearly 23 years of scientific research and breeding in China, 38 natural colored cotton varieties with relatively stable quality have been cultivated. Although the research results on the types of colored cotton are relatively rich, the actual colored cotton products are difficult to form a market scale. At present, only brown and green colored cotton can be used in actual production, with limited color types and poor color stability.

organic cotton

According to the definition of organic cotton by TEXAS organic program in the United States, after stopping the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the cotton planted in the field for more than 3 years is called "organic cotton". One of the standards to distinguish organic cotton from ordinary cotton is that organic cotton needs to pass organic certification. Foreign certification mainly includes Global Organic Textile Certification Standard (GOTS) and Organic Content Standard (OCS) certification, while domestic certification is "China Organic Products. Organic cotton is produced without damaging the soil because it is grown without the use of pesticides, saving 88% of water and 62% of energy compared to conventional cotton.

In the process of using organic cotton, its various performance indicators are relatively poor compared to ordinary cotton. It requires special closed-loop management and certification of the entire production industry chain. The overall production cost is high, but in recent years, many brands that pursue green environmental protection, such as Baby clothing and children's clothing brands pay more attention to the use of organic cotton.

Recycled cotton is made from discarded cotton, industrial scraps, and fabric and yarn heads from textile companies. Specifically, there are two different recycling methods, one is to collect, decolorise, open and then process the waste cotton clothing or the scraps of the clothing factory processing process into cotton fibers, and the other is to collect the spinning process or the back silk generated by the winding process, which is used after physical processing.

The regenerated cotton produced by the former method is mainly used for filling of cleaning cloth, furniture and building materials, among which the representative industrial cluster is Cangnan area of Wenzhou in China; the regenerated cotton produced by the latter method can be normally used for textile and clothing products. at present, many enterprises are carrying out relevant product research and development, for example, Jiangsu Lianfa Co., Ltd. uses recycled cotton fancy yarn for the production of tooling wind shirts.

(source: textile guide official micro)

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