Novozymes, a provider of biological solutions for technical industries including textiles, shares its plans to launch an enzymatic solution capable of extending the life of all plant-based fibres.
Enzymes come from nature and can return to nature; it’s not like a chemical, it’s a totally recyclable technology, says Ole Bill Joergensen, business development manager at Novozymes: “We are using [enzymes and microbes] to solve problems or do things that have, in the past, been done with chemicals, unsustainably.”
And why shouldn’t there be a biological solution to every unsustainable hurdle in the world? asks Louise Lihn, global brand marketing manager at the company. Based in Denmark, Novozymes offers enzymatic and microbial treatments for products across many industries. Its approach, according to Lihn, is to help develop the diversity of bio-solutions by examining unsustainability and asking: “How can we design a biological solution that can solve this?”
Enzymatic solutions
It’s no longer uncommon for the textile and fashion industries to seek out alternative solutions, like enzyme treatments, to dissolve long-established problems. For example, Lihn explains, its most recent projects have somewhat focused on tackling the effects of overproduction.
A concept titled Livelong, launched this year, uses enzymes to polish the surface of cotton fibres, thereby reducing the inevitability of pilling. Quality can supposedly be retained by this solution, extending the lifetime of garments ‘up to 20-30%’ further than traditional, chemically treated clothes. Garment lifecycles are subject to massive critique in industry as circular economy initiatives push for end-users to get more wear out of a garment before throwing it out; as such, Lihn adds that Novozymes’ solution enables textile waste to be reduced because customers are encouraged to retain products for even longer than usual.
The company also has solutions to other pertinent issues orbiting sustainability. Joergensen adds that the company offers enzymes for fabric cleaning, woven fabric de-sizing and denim abrasion, bleaching and finishing. Subsequently, textile and garment manufacturers employing the capabilities of enzymes can cut back at the high pH and harsh chemical usage that leads to the overconsumption of water, toxic effluent and the use of copious amounts of energy in the wastewater cleaning process: “The enzyme is just a protein, so when it’s inactivated it is degraded into natural components.”
And elsewhere, Novozymes enables even production processes to be shortened, combining finishing processes with dyeing. It’s quite simple actually, says Joergensen: “The first generation of enzyme [treatments] were used before the dyeing because the enzymes were not compatible with the process conditions in the dye bath – they were not compatible with the chemicals and the dyestuff. So, we developed, some years ago, enzymes that were tolerant to the dyebath. You can start the dyeing process the same way.”
Joergensen explains that its finishing enzymes, such as Livelong, can be added to the dyebath alongside the standard dyestuff and chemicals, enabling a two-for-one process that shortens time, water usage and reduces effluent.
Adoption
With a comprehensive enzyme portfolio, such proliferating enzymatic solutions exemplify industry’s keen demand for bio-solutions, but such solutions have been around for a while, and the textile industry is still operating mostly on traditional, damaging processes.
For example, around 1,900 chemicals are used in the production of clothing according to the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), and the European Union (EU) classifies 165 of these as hazardous to health and the environment. By exchanging some of these chemical processes for biodegradable enzymes, manufacturers could start to offset such damage.
But Joergensen adds that Novozymes’ enzyme business was established over 50 years ago to deliver biological solutions, thus highlighting bio-solutions have been around for a little while, at least. Although Joergensen and Lihn suggest the company has a dedicated clientele with interest growing, the wider industry shows reluctance to sustainable change, with conversation still ongoing. So, why is the adoption of enzyme treatments so slow?
Both Lihn and Joergensen are adamant cost is not a primary factor limiting the adoption of enzyme treatments in industry. Although unaware of the specific cost additions in the value chain, the Novozymes team says it had asked consumers in Europe how much premium they would be willing to pay for enzyme-treated garments.
“They said a 10% higher price would be acceptable to them,” Joergensen says. “Although there’s a long value chain, we can guestimate that the final cost addition to [processes] is quite low compared to the value additions seen by the customers.”
Perhaps it is the complexity of the enzymatic science that dissuades customers; as such, the team evolved its way of communicating dialogue around sustainability to ensure the message comes across: “We realised we needed to bring this message out in a clearer way,” Joergensen says, “and use less technical terms than we did in the past. We needed to be in dialogue with fashion producers as well, so that they understand this.”
But actually, Lihn theorises that the lacking urgency in the adoption of bio-solutions is down to complicated value chains involving manufacturers, mills and brands. Novozymes has, in the past, sold to all the manufacturing agents along the chain, but for the past year Lihn says the company has tried to communicate directly with brands, where perhaps a real pull for the adoption of enzyme treatments can take place. Novozymes says these new approaches are necessary in the textile industry, especially for manufacturing sectors where awareness of sustainability falls beneath its favour of traditional processes.
“We can see that more and more brands are becoming more concerned and also pressured to become more sustainable and to deliver sustainable solutions because they see that there is more textile waste than ever before,” says Lihn. This sentiment is matched by others in industry: bio-dye company Colorifix says regulatory pressure is paying off in the dyes and chemicals sector. But, in communicating with brands, Novozymes has determined that, although awareness has increased, supply from manufacturers doesn’t quite meet demand in the textile industry: “We see that consumers are requesting more sustainable solutions; they are much more concerned about the environment, but there are not enough transparent solutions for them to choose [from].”
Diversity
Consequently, part of Novozymes’ wish for industry is to see the diversity of enzymatic and microbial solutions increase. Whether it’s enzymatic, quality-upgrading colouration or developments to finishing treatments, Lihn says “the diversity within enzymes has been growing and will be growing even more in the future”.
And to catalyse this increase in diversity, Novozymes will later this year launch a quality improvement amendment to the Livelong concept that works for ‘all plant-based fibres’.
“We will be the first to create a solution that can actually extend the lifetime of clothes made from all plant-based fibres – not only cotton, but also viscose, modal and lyocell,” Lihn says, accrediting the development to a noticeable trend of brands rejecting the use of plastic and synthetic materials like polyester.
“I think the technologies within biology are just getting better and better. Nature has already developed a huge diversity and we are making progress in translating this diversity from nature into industrial solutions.”
Source: www.wtin.com