OVERALL SUMMARY
The overall competitiveness of European textile is under strong pressure from price competition from outside the EU, especially from the Far East.
Cotton textiles undergo a toxic and costly bleaching process that weighs heavily on the quality, cost and environmental impact of textile manufacture. In addition, European cotton manufacturers are facing a serious competitive threat as cotton loses ground to synthetics on the basis of price, perceived quality and diversity of end-uses.
These global market pressures are compounded by the heavily chemical-dependant nature of the sector, subject to the cost of applying EU environmental legislation.
Current bleaching methods use hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and sodium hypochlorite (NaClO), resulting in fabric damage, formation of toxic by-products and large amounts of water and energy to remove these chemicals. Any innovation that can effectively reduce the toxic chemicals used for bleaching will result in less fabric damage and lower waste treatment costs.
The proposed CottonBleach project offers the technological tool to help achieve these objectives by reducing fibre damage as well as water and energy consumption, providing a cost effective process to comply with current environmental legislation instead of sending cotton-finishing processes to countries with lax environmental norms, thus improving the competitive edge of European textile SMEs.
