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Vietnam

__In what areas has the fashion industry made the biggest strides in sustainability in the last five years?__

“I think in awareness. I don’t see a lot of change yet in the product. [Making] cotton [more sustainable has been] the biggest step. There is much more awareness now, and if you look at all the seminars, there’s a lot of talk and not a lot being done. But I think they’re talking so much that something will really rapidly change.” 

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Founded by cousins Olaf Lohle and Patrick Lohle, CleanDye is the first dyeing factory in the world that doesn’t use water or process chemicals to color garments. The secret lies in three water-free DyeCoo dyeing machines, a technology that both Lohles invested both time and money promoting before lackluster public interest spurred them to greater action. 

“No one wanted to be the guinea pig,” Olaf said. “We believe very strongly in this, and we said that if no one else is going to do it, let us do it.” 

The Lohles opened the water-free factory in Vietnam in April, with plans for a second within the next five years. (While there are also DyeCoo machines in factories in Taiwan and Thailand, CleanDye is the only factory that exclusively uses the water-free systems, Olaf said.) 

How it works: Rather than using H₂O to dye fabric, DyeCoo uses a pressurized form of CO₂ with high solvent power to dissolve pure pigments without dispersing agents. The process is highly efficient—99 percent of the dye entered into the system is absorbed by the knitted and woven fabrics and yarns, according to Olaf. Because the fabric doesn’t require drying, additional energy and water consumption savings are also realized. 

When asked about the future of textile dyeing, water holds a leading role in Olaf’s vision. He believes the cost of water is not yet included in a garment’s price but it’s just a matter of time before this occurs.   

“Governments have to change their attitude toward this because there’s a big lack of water in the world,” he said. “I think the stat is that the global volume of garments will increase by 63 percent in the next 12 years. This means there will be a lot more dye houses built in the future. Dye houses for now are creating waste—and a lot of it. I don’t expect countries will continue like this.”

Because only polyester can be dyed using the system at this time, it’s Olaf’s hope that designers will begin their process with a recycled (and recyclable) version of this fabric in mind. “It starts with the designers,” he said. “If we can take recycling and make yarn again, then we are completely circular.” 


CleanDye

To disrupt the dyeing industry, CleanDye is choosing CO₂ over H₂O.

Sri Lanka

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__In what areas has the fashion industry made the biggest strides in sustainability in the last five years?__

- Improving the supply chain and making it more traceable and open to its 	ultimate customers;

- Having more sustainable products with better materials, either recyclable or more durable;
  	
- Understanding life-cycle impacts and addressing them head on instead of pushing costs and impacts up the supply chain;
 
- Overall reduction in impact from fast fashion and also chemicals and 	finishes that negatively affect the environment;

- Willingness to collaborate on multi-stakeholder initiatives and partnerships to resolve and respond to common issues around sustainable manufacturing;

- Improved measurement of impact, e.g., the Higg Facility Environmental Module and the Social Labor Convergence Project.


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When Hirdaramani Group set aside $6.3 million a decade ago to establish Asia’s first carbon-neutral clothing factory—known as Mihila, or “Earth” in Sinhala—the apparel manufacturer was just laying the foundation of what would become a long-term strategy to benefit both people and planet. 

Today, Hirdaramani operates six LEED Gold- and Platinum-certified manufacturing plants in Sri Lanka alone. It has made a three-fold investment in renewable energy sources, including one mini-hydro and three wind-power plants. In 2018, Hirdaramani established Suryadhanavi (“born of the sun”), a rooftop solar array, spanning eight of its largest manufacturing units, that now accounts for more than 30 percent of the group’s annual electricity demand. Instead of air conditioning, some facilities rely on evaporative cooling. 

Hirdaramani has always regarded sustainability as a core focus of its business, said Nikhil Hirdaramani, the company’s director, but it hasn’t been the sole motivator. 

“We need to be competitive, and for this we need to be able to maintain our overhead costs,” he said. “If we are not environmentally sustainable, we will not be financially sustainable in the long term. Customer recognition of our efforts and continued business with them for a long-term relationship is also a driving factor.”

Indeed, Hirdaramani’s efforts have paid off. In May, the group announced that its Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse-gas emissions have achieved “net zero” status, meaning its factories are offsetting as much carbon from the air as they generate. The assessment was conducted by Carbon Consulting Company, which validated Hirdaramani’s footprint using global ISO-14064-1 and -2 standards. 

Next up for the manufacturer? An industrial wastewater recycling program that will see Hirdaramani reroute more than 50 percent of its industrial water back into its manufacturing. A member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular initiative, Hirdaramani will also be joining the nonprofit’s Jeans Redesign project to tackle waste and pollution in denim production. 

It’s not sitting on its laurels, however. 

“The group is proud of its sustainability journey but acknowledges that there is so much more that must be done,” Hirdaramani said.


Hirdaramani Group

Hirdaramani

Hirdaramani Group’s Sri Lankan apparel vertical has achieved net-zero carbon emissions.

About Sustaining Voices

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While many sustainability efforts center around the use of cotton, the Eco Spindles factory is taking a different route: transforming post-consumer plastic bottles into polyester yarn. 

Established in Sri Lanka in 2018, the 13,000-square-meter plant bypasses the polymerization process of converting PET flakes to chips to yarn, instead creating the yarn directly from the flakes. Color pigments can be inserted as part of the extrusion process via dope dyeing, according to the company, further enhancing sustainability by avoiding the discharge of colored waste.

In addition to manufacturing yarn, Eco Spindles also makes monofilaments for cleaning tools, and the company abides by the Global Recycled Standard (GRS), Restricted Substances Lists (RSL) and Oeko-Tex Standard 100. Its parent company, BPPL Holdings, collects roughly 200 to 250 tons of PET waste each month, with approximately 70 tons used to generate the synthetic yarn and 150 tons to produce synthetic brush filaments. 
 
According to Eco Spindles, it takes 10 plastic bottles to make a new T-shirt and 63 bottles to make a sweater. The plant is capable of supplying 15 percent of the polyester yarn required by Sri Lanka’s textile and apparel sectors, it said.  

While Eco Spindles is the only factory in Sri Lanka capable of creating yarn from flakes, it may soon have company. BPPL Holdings says it plans to spend up to 1.5 billion rupees ($21.3 million) on a second yarn-production plant on the same premises. 



Eco Spindles

EcoSpindles

Eco Spindles’ first-of-its-kind plant transforms castoff plastic bottles into clothing yarn. 

About Sustaining Voices

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About Sustaining Voices

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