SEOUL, South Korea — October 12, 2021 — Denim is increasingly being held to environmentally friendly standards as consumers put pressure on brands and retailers to reduce jeans’ ecological footprint.
In response, Hyosung has developed a number of sustainable denim solutions, which the company looks forward to presenting to industry members during its personalized Denim Days event taking place in New York City, Los Angeles and London on select dates in November 2021.
creora® 3D Max spandex – for recyclable jeans
Circularity is top of mind and denim brands and mills are following Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Jeans Redesign guidelines for recyclable denim. Jeans Redesign’s standards are meant to create jeans that are both more durable and easier to separate and recycle.
Among its guidelines is a requirement that denim be made with a minimum of 98 percent cellulosic material leaving 2 percent of the content for stretch or synthetic material — a challenge for Jeans Redesign participants as consumers are accustomed to high stretch and comfort. Hyosung aims to help denim brands and mills fit the program criteria with its creora® 3D Max spandex.
“Starting from the beginning, clearly people have demonstrated they want stretch,” said Mike Simko, global marketing director, Hyosung Textiles. “The question becomes, how does the spandex industry react and make it so that you’ve got sustainability and circularity starting from the inputs?”
According to Simko, the industry desires denim that stretches by more than 50 percent with a maximum of 5 percent growth. Conventional spandex alone will provide stretch, but the recovery won’t live up to the standard — regardless the percentage of spandex in the material.
To achieve the recovery needed, the typical solution has been to mix polyester in with the spandex, creating a dual core that can more effectively bounce back, however this added polyester content means that synthetic yarns make up 12 to 16 percent of a finished garment, preventing denim from meeting the 98 percent threshold for Jeans Redesign.
Hyosung’s creora 3D Max offers a solution to achieve a balance of stretch and recyclability, since it delivers a high performance stretch even as a small portion of fabric content. The yarn swaps the typical polyester core for spandex, creating a fully stretch material that retains the recovery properties of the polyester-spandex combination.
creora® regen spandex — for jeans made with 100-percent recycled materials
To improve the life cycle assessment of spandex, Hyosung has developed creora regen spandex, which is made of 100-percent reclaimed waste and has a 67 percent smaller carbon footprint than conventional spandex.
creora® bio-based spandex — for jeans made with renewable resources
Hyosung’s creora bio-based spandex replaces 30 percent of chemicals with ones derived from dent corn, so when the corn is growing it consumes carbon dioxide, thus reducing greenhouse gases (all documented in SAC’s HIGG index).
GRS-certified 100-percent recycled multi-function fibers — for jeans with added performance
Hyosung will also present its portfolio of 100-percent recycled Mipan® regen nylon and regen polyester yarns with multi-functional properties such as cooling and drying, light-weight, cotton-touch and comfort stretch.
Posted October 21, 2021
Source: Hyosung
