Rayon revealed: fashion’s most confusing fiber has a dark past but a hopeful future | Fashion


Rayon is a soft, silky fabric that is perhaps the most confusing of all textiles. Sometimes called viscose, modal, lyocell, tencel, acetate or bamboo. It tends to feel denser and more fluid than cotton or linen, but this also depends on how it was spun and spun.

The best way to understand rayon is to think of it as an umbrella term for textiles that are made from cellulose, the building block of most plants. It can be extracted from straw, cotton waste and other natural materials, but in the case of rayon, it mainly comes from the wood pulp of pine, eucalyptus or beech.

It is often marketed as an environmentally friendly fiber because it is made from natural, renewable materials (trees). But like many durable materials, there are some dark clouds over its credentials.

According to the non-profit Canopy, 200 million trees are cut down each year to produce textiles. Of the 6.5 million metric tons of synthetic fiber produced each year, almost half comes from ancient and endangered forests.

Forests are integral to the fight against global warming because carbon is stored in the woody biomass of tree trunks and branches, and in the roots, shrubs and soil that make up the forest floor. Given the immense beauty of forests, and the plants, animals and birds they provide home to, the link between rayon and deforestation is a particularly sad truth and one of fashion’s best-kept secrets.

Amanda Carr, senior manager at CanopyStyle Campaign, says that in this forest-based fabric supply chain there is an opportunity to direct investment towards solutions and away from problems. “It’s like we’re standing on the edge of a cliff and we have an opportunity to build a fence at the top versus a hospital at the bottom.”

According to Canopy, 200 million trees are cut down each year to make textiles (as beautiful as they are). Photo: Getty Images

Hazardous waste turned the river water dark red

Rayon fiber production has roughly doubled in the last three decades, and its share of the global fiber market continues to grow (in 2019 it was 6.4%). Carr says Canopy is working to ensure this growth is not facilitated by further deforestation. Their work is at least partly responsible for many fashion brands describing their rayon, silk or modal products as FSC or PEFC certified – meaning it came from an sustainably managed forest or plantation. stable.

The carbon footprint of rayon is further complicated by the process of turning wood into textiles. Unlike cotton, wool or silk, which emerge naturally smooth, elastic and ready to be spun, turning a tree into fabric can be highly toxic to both workers and the environment.

Rayon also has ties to some of the world’s darkest stories. In the middle of World War II, the Nazis forced prisoners to work in rayon factories. There are reports of chemicals (sulfuric acid) burning holes in their uniforms, causing injuries wherever it touched the skin, while the emissions resulted in neurological side effects such as blindness and psychosis.

These issues have continued into the 21st century. A 2017 report by the Changing Markets Foundation found visible and odorous pollution at production sites in India belonging to the Aditya Birla Group – the world’s largest viscose producer.

Hazardous waste had turned the river water dark red; an independent laboratory test found the air had 125 times the WHO-recommended level of carbon disulfide; surrounding villages had no access to safe drinking water and, in one alarming case, 60 villagers became seriously ill and lost the ability to walk. Aditya Birla Group denied that these problems were related to its operations.

However, similar problems have been reported across China and other parts of India and Indonesia – and the issues are not limited to one company.

The Changing Markets Foundation report made several recommendations on how to make viscose rayon production more sustainable, with a particular focus on air pollution, water pollution, solid waste disposal, energy resources, energy consumption and health and worker safety. The foundation suggested implementing closed-loop production to ensure that chemical waste was recovered and recycled where possible, and that exhaust air was condensed and captured to recover carbon disulfide emissions and reuse it.

By 2020 Aditya Birla Group announced that it has set a target to have all its manufacturing sites compliant with EU BAT standards and verified by the end of 2022.

Kathleen Rademan, innovation platform director at Fashion for Good, says that “manufacturers responsible for 50% of global viscose production have committed to responsible manufacturing”. She points to Spinnova and Infinite Fiber Company as examples of companies implementing chemical management best practices. Lenzing, one of the world’s largest producers of viscose, has the trademark Tencel, which is also produced using closed processes.

Art Deco pattern for fabric.
Art Deco pattern for fabric. The challenge is to make it more sustainable. Photo: MaryliaDesign/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The report concluded that viscose has the potential to be a sustainable fiber if production is improved; in addition to the responsible provision of raw materials.

Voluntary certifications are not enough

So what do responsibly sourced raw materials look like? Certifications are widely considered good, if imperfect, tools for setting standards across countries for responsible forest management. Most importantly, they guarantee traceability to ensure that the source of the rayon was not an ancient or endangered forest.

Pointing to the fact that trees and forests are an important aid against a warming planet, Carr says Canopy’s priority is to ensure that there are no sources of viscous artificial fibers in ancient or endangered forests.

But she notes that the certificates are limited by scale. Each of these is applied from a local perspective, and often ecological considerations or planetary needs require a more global or regional perspective. “This is not the kind of planning that voluntary certificates applied by individual corporations accomplish,” she says.

The next step is to find sourcing solutions to completely replace fibers from forests.

Cotton ball
Theoretically all natural fabrics and even agricultural waste can be regenerated into viscose rayon. Photo: Tetiana Garkusha/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Converting old textiles into new ones

Any plant-based material can potentially serve as a source of cellulose and be digested to make fibers, so theoretically all natural fabrics and even agricultural waste can be regenerated into silk fabric.

According to Textile Exchange, the market share of ‘recycled’ cellulose fibers is very small, but a lot of ongoing research and development means it is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Recent technological advances have made it possible to convert some textile waste into new materials.

The process can be much more efficient than converting trees due to the high cellulose content of some fibers, such as cotton. According to Canopy, on average it takes 2.5-3 tons of trees to create 1 ton of viscose pulp, but only about 1 ton of recycled cotton or rayon is needed to make 1 ton of viscose pulp. With that in mind, Rademan says, “it makes more sense to try to value the resources we already have through textile-to-textile recycling” rather than relying on virgin resources like trees.

Considering the amount of textile waste sent to landfill every second, the notion that we can turn old textiles into new textiles with performance characteristics superior to synthetics is extremely interesting. Viscose is better on the body than synthetics; It breathes against the skin and does not have a complicated relationship with oil or sweat, which makes it more pleasant to wear. And it doesn’t shed plastic microfibers into waterways every time it’s washed.

While we are in the early days of these solutions, with the large-scale infrastructure required for collection, sorting and recycling, there are already innovators operating in this space. Lenzing’s Refibra line consists of about 30% recycled cotton.

Seattle-based company Evrnu launched a fabric called NuCycle that is made from recycled textile waste in April of this year. And in May, fast fashion giant Inditex invested €100 million in Infinited Fiber, a Finnish startup that also creates fabrics from textile waste.

Sun coated cover.
Dressed in sunshine. Photo: Black Inc

Despite the dark and complex history of viscose, which in many ways extends to the present, it may have a hopeful future.

If we can eliminate trees and forests at their source, replace them with textile waste, and further innovate production to be closed and non-toxic, viscose rayon can truly earn the ecological reputation it deserves. given.



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