About Sustaining Voices
Sourcing Journal’s Sustaining Voices celebrates the efforts the apparel industry is making toward securing a more environmentally responsible future through creative innovations, scalable solutions and forward-thinking initiatives that are spinning intent into action.
Overview
Vertical Knits has reduced freshwater use during cotton dyeing by a massive 85 percent.
Deep Dive
“Lots of people ask how we reduced water consumption so dramatically,” said Meisy Solano, sustainability manager at Vertical Knits, a sportswear manufacturer that handles everything from knitting and dyeing to screenprinting and packaging.
Dramatic is right. When Vertical Knits worked with a major sportswear producer last year, it managed to slash the company's freshwater use during dyeing by a whopping 85 percent. This came out to just 20 liters of water per kilogram of cotton fabric—a mere thimbleful compared to conventional processes. Another upside? The energy bill dropped by 50 percent.
Based in Mérida, Mexico, Vertical Knits’ commitment to water conservation stems, in part, from its cultural heritage.
“Our factory is located in a region where water is abundant and resource scarcity is not an issue, but the people that live here grow up with a connection to water, due to the cenotes—underground rivers located in the Yucatan—which are considered sacred to the Mayan culture, and this mindset has been part of our company values,” said sustainability engineer Fernando Soto.
Still, cutting back on its water footprint has been a “long journey,” one that began with installing measurement controls, including a pair of flowmeters to quantify its rate of flow. (Vertical Knits currently operates 26.) After establishing a 2015 baseline, plus a goal of reducing freshwater consumption and water reuse by 70 percent by 2020, the factory invested in high-capacity but water-sipping dyeing machines, a heat-recovery system and a wastewater treatment plant that curtailed its freshwater use by 80 percent.
Team effort played a part, too. “We couldn’t solve problems without including people from maintenance, production, engineering and sustainability and their different perspectives, experience and skills,” Solano said.
It also helped not to think of water just as a box on a check list, but as a fundamental component of the company’s operations.
“Now, water is part of the production process and a deeply important part of our mindset,” Soto said.
In what areas has the fashion industry made the biggest strides in sustainability in the last five years?
“The fashion business has changed and sustainability topics are increasingly important. Technology has allowed us to increase quality and reduce time and environmental impact. Sustainable products are demanded by a more conscious consumer who wants to know the source of raw materials.
When the problem is global, efforts also need to be global, so transparency is a very important tool to share best practices and common mistakes—through forums, posts or other ways—to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry.”