Taiwan-based Kingwhale — a bluesign®- and Oeko-Tex®-compliant vertically integrated manufacturer of performance apparel fabrics and finished products — reports that utilizing Low Impact Technology™ (L.I.T.™) in its manufacturing and dyeing processes has led to significantly reduced use of energy, water and dyestuffs.

L.I.T. is designed to conserve energy and raw materials from the start of manufacturing and includes a process to modify the polyester molecules during fiber manufacturing to enable the yarn to take up the dye more quickly than conventional polyester yarn, thereby requiring less dyestuff to be used and cutting the amount of process energy and water needed as well. According to the company, the dyeing technology uses 22-percent less electricity for coloring and heating, 50-percent less thermal energy for steam creation, 60-percent less water and 15-percent less dyestuffs than traditional dyeing processes to achieve comparable results.

Kingwhale's fleece products were the first to be dyed using the L.I.T. process, and the company now also dyes baselayer fabrics using L.I.T.

"Depending on the amount of fiber in a fabric, ... the overall water and energy savings [using L.I.T.] can be very substantial," said James Huang, president, Kingwhale. "An average fleece fabric can save over 8 gallons of water per garment. Each L.I.T. fleece dye lot can save 1150 [kilowatt hours] of energy — enough to power a typical U.S. household for over a month."

December 20, 2011