. In July, the company said it had raised $15 million from private investors, bringing its total to $45 million. Some of that money went to expand its factory in Peoria, Illinois, where it’s now working to scale up production to hundreds of thousands of square feet of Clarus per month. In September, NFW announced ato bring Clarus fibers into some of the brand’s new products. Haverhals says hundreds of brands are in line to buy the company's textiles for their own products.
Synthetic materials came to prominence in clothing in the 1940s when DuPont pioneered the use of rayon and nylon in fabrics. In the 1950s, the chemical giant released a new material it called Dacron, a trade name for polyethylene terephthalate, or polyester. The new material was durable and wrinkle resistant and easily made by combining ethylene glycol with terephthalic acid and then melting them together. Polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET, is also used to make plastic bottles.
Natural materials like cotton and hemp are abundant; plants make up more than 80 percent of Earth’s biomass. Natural fibers are not just biodegradable, they are compostable. This means they don’t just break down into; they can instead become fertilizer as they decompose. Another company, Circ, in Danville, Virginia, is attacking the problem of sustainability in the clothing industry with a different but no less technical approach. Clothes made with blends of natural and synthetic fibers are challenging to recycle. Separating nylon thread from a cotton shirt, for example, is so laborious and expensive that it doesn’t make economic sense. Circ wants to make it easier to mechanically separate blended fabrics, to reduce the need for new plastics.
Looks interesting. Wonder how much energy the process requires and, once factored in, if it is truly environment friendly. I presume they’ve confirmed it is easily biodegradable.
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