Eighteen months ago, dye sublimation didn’t even register on the dial at Manchester Print Services, the wide-format digital printing company set-up by Lee Egan and Andy Lambert in 2010. Sixteen months ago, a Mimaki JV5 320-DS dye sublimation printer bought through CMYUK, the UK’s largest independent supplier of digital wide format printers, cutters and materials, paved the way.
Archroma, a global leader in color and specialty chemicals towards sustainable solutions, recently launched at the ITMA exhibition its new Foron® SP-WF, a range of high wet-fast disperse dyes for sportswear and active wear applications.
The Foron® SP-WF dyes are especially suited for the coloration of polyester fibers and microfibers, and polyester/elastane blends, in exhaustion application.
The fashion bizz gets a tough enough time (and rightly so) for being one of the world’s most-polluting industries. Add in the fact that the most prevalent material in our clothes is also one of the worst culprits in polluting the planet and you can see why cotton is currently public enemy #1.
But why is the fluffy cotton crop so bad for the planet? And what can we do about it? GLAMOUR spoke to Charlotte Turner, Head of Sustainable Fashion & Textiles at sustainability and communications consultancy Eco-Age to get the low-down.
Timothy Cook, lead researcher and assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Buffalo said that, “Methylene blue is a widely used dye. It can be harmful to health, so it’s not something you want to dump into the environment without treating it,” said Timothy Cook, lead researcher and assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Buffalo. Also he added that, “There’s been a lot of work done on ways to sequester methylene blue out of water, but the problem with a lot of these methods is that they’re expensive and generate other kinds of waste products.”
