It was a different kind of catwalk in Almedalen in Sweden. At a seminar called ”The world’s most sustainable catwalk” a garment made of the water repellent and fluorocarbon-free fabric OrganoTex was presented.
The material was made of recycled polyester from 7-up bottles collected by the Buddhist charity organization Tzu Chi Foundation in Taiwan, Swedish clean-tech company OrganoClick said in a statement.
Water repellent treatments (so called DWR’s) for textiles and garments contain almost always fluorocarbons, a group of chemicals that are bio-accumulative and can cause cancer and are hormonal disturbance. OrganoClick has developed an alternative DWR-technology free from fluorocarbons which only contains non-harmful substances which are biodegradable. At Almedalen, during the seminar, “The world’s most sustainable catwalk”, an OrganoTex-treated garment designed by Karolina Nilsson was presented.
“By using biodegradable and non-toxic chemistry in our products we can be sure that we don´t cause any environmental problems which the long-chain fluorocarbons do”, said Robin Grankvist, business area manager for performance textiles & nonwoven at OrganoClick.
The new fluorocarbon-free technology has been developed by OrganoClick´s scientists and in January 2014 it was implemented in factories at Chang-Ho Fibers, a Taiwanese textile producer. Since then about 100 textiles has been developed which are water repellent and free from fluorocarbons. Filippa K was the first fashion brand to start use OrganoClick’s technology in its collection in February 2015.
The garment shown in Almedalen is made from recycled polyester made by OrganoClick´s Taiwanese partner Chang-Ho Fibers. The raw-material for the fabric originates from 7-up bottles collected by the Buddhist charity organization Tzu Chi Foundation in Taiwan.
The fabric is not dyed and thereby the original green color of the 7-up bottle has been preserved which saves great amount of chemicals, water and energy during the manufacturing process. The garment has been developed in a collaboration between OrganoClick, Chang-Ho Fibers, the Textile University of Borås and TEKO.
