One of the growing trends within sustainable textiles is the work being done to turn agricultural waste into wearable fibers.
Today, many of those fibers are being blended with cotton to create yarn and fabric that is sustainable, and has a special look and feel.
“Right now we are making fabrics that are cotton blended with pineapple, banana, bamboo, galangal, lotus, hemp and other fibers,” said Bandid Pongsarojanavit at S. T. Textile Co., Ltd. The company is mainly supplying brands in Japan and the EU.
They are also using some natural dyes made from tea, coffee, cinnamon and other plant-based materials. S.T. Textile prepares these natural dye stuffs and provides them, along with the formula, to the dye house that does the wet processing for them.
“We optimum utilize agricultural waste to make our natural fibers and natural dyes. Then the feedstock and fertilizer are reused until we get to zero waste.”
“We optimum utilize agricultural waste to make our natural fibers and natural dyes. Then the feedstock and fertilizer are reused until we get to zero waste,” he said.
“Customers are looking for more sustainable products to help reduce greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide and other environmental toxins. These products meet these requirements.”
Fabrics That are Natural and High Quality
S.T. Textile ensures the high quality of their fabrics by using U.S. cotton yarns, alongside the yarn made from agricultural byproducts.
“We choose to use U.S. cotton yarn because the quality and the supply is very reliable. Also Cotton Council International (CCI) provides a lot of benefits for our company, including technical support that helps improve our mill, the Mill Exchange program and marketing support,” said Mr. Pongsarojanavit.
The company is producing 100,000 meters of natural fibers fabric per month.
To help their customers ensure that the fabrics from S.T. Textile meets the highest sustainability standards, the company joined the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol® (the Trust Protocol).
“The Trust Protocol helps as we work to meet our customers’ requirments. It shows customers that our cotton is sustainable and it provides us with the documentation and certifications that our customers are requesting. This is very important for us now,” he said.
Meeting Market Challenges
Even though logistics and deliveries are facing logjams, customers still want faster response times.
“There are a lot of dynamic changes happening in the market. So we need a very quick response and a much closer collaboration between spinners and fabric mills.
We need our yarn suppliers to be very reliable – that’s one of the most important things,” said Mr. Pongsarojanavit.
The company sources its cotton yarn from domestic spinners, which helps to shorten lead times.
The combination of shorter lead times and high quality is encouraging a growing number of brands to source their fabric in Thailand.
“The garments are being made in other countries in ASEAN, and because of our location, we can ship the fabrics to them very quickly. Delivery from Thailand is very reliable, which really helps the factories.
“They come to Thailand because we offer stable and reliable production,” said Mr. Pongsarojanavit.
Email. bandidp@gmail.com | Tel. +66 02 389-2377-9
Certified Sustainable
The Trust Protocol is aligned with existing sustainability programs including the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. It brings quantifiable and verifiable goals and measurement to sustainable cotton production, and drives continuous improvement in six key sustainability metrics – land use, soil carbon, water management, soil loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy efficiency. The Trust Protocol is designed from the ground up to address the unique regulatory and larger farm growing environment in the United States.
How the Trust Protocol Works
The Protocol Consumption Management Solution (PCMS) starts at the gin when the participating producer’s cotton is ginned and each unique Permanent Bale Identification number (PBI) is attached. At this point we know the exact gin weight and can create an exact amount of Protocol Cotton Consumption Units, where one Protocol Cotton Consumption Unit is created for each kilogram of Protocol Verified Cotton. This important step provides absolute authentication of U.S. cotton origin, verifying against the USDA database.
Supply Chain Transparency
The PCMS harnesses blockchain technology through a powerful combination of the Trust Protocol platform and TextileGenesis™ system to deliver full supply chain transparency by recording and verifying the movement of U.S. cotton along the entire supply chain. This creates article-specific transparency for finished products that was not previously accessible to brands and retailers.
Trusted Third Party Certification
The Trust Protocol incorporates a comprehensive program of verification against Trust Protocol benchmarks, in the form of both second-party and independent third-party audits of grower performance through Control Union Certifications—the latter through allocated on-site visits.
Control Union Certifications has certified over 150 industry standards programs worldwide, including working as a key partner in the early development and piloting phases of Impact Claim Verification Protocol.
Learn More https://trustuscotton.org
The COTTON USA Advantage
- Family growers who are committed to working their fields sustainably and leaving them better for future generations.
- A long history of innovative harvesting and ginning technologies resulting in higher-quality cotton.
- One of the highest rates of adoption in the world for Precision Agriculture, which minimizes water and pesticide usage.
- U.S. farmers operate under voluminous, stringent, and enforceable regulations.
- A commitment to transparent partnership that is unmatched anywhere.
- One of the most comprehensive systems for monitoring and measuring all the key metrics involved in sustainability.
U.S. Cotton Facts
- 2/3 of U.S. cotton land uses only rain water
- U.S. cotton water use efficiency has improved by 79% over the past 35 years
- Cotton is carbon footprint neutral, meaning the plants remove more greenhouse gasses than production produces.
Sustainability Goals
The U.S. cotton industry is building upon the strong environmental gains already achieved over the past 35 years. The aim is to help members meet their current needs while making the world a better place for future generations.
Specific goals include:
- Reducing by 13 percent the amount of land needed to produce a pound of cotton fiber
- Reducing soil loss by 50 percent, in balance with new soil formation
- Increasing water use efficiency (more fiber per gallon) by 18 percent
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 39 percent
- Increasing soil carbon in fields by 30 percent
- Reducing energy to produce seed cotton and ginned lint by 15 percent
Learn More www.cotton.org
