Textile Industry And Sustainability: New Challenges From Unexploited Natural Fibers

Environmental awareness has prompted many industries, particularly in developed countries, to consider more sustainable ways of operating. Now, industries increasingly are looking directly at natural materials in a more positive and proactive manner: they are considered not only as technically valid components, but also as elements that can contribute to the premium pricing of final products because of their superior environmental attributes and their compatibility with socially responsible production and disposal requisites [1].The textile industry, more specially, has a high environmental impact and is responsible for a significant amount of waste. Today, it creates more plastic waste than Germany's urban waste and consumes more oil than the whole of France. This can be attributed to the massive production and consumption of synthetic fibres. The industrial revolution, the invention of synthetic fibres and ultimately fast-fashion trends have amplified the impact of the textile industry that has even expanded to include industrial applications as airplanes, cars, machinery and construction goods.Nowadays, there is an emerging demand for sustainable textiles, which a number of key industries are well placed to develop and promote to consumers. For thousands of years the textile industry has developed around traditional natural fibres: cotton, wool, silk, and flax. The new challenge for research is to find the ideal natural fiber unexploited--organically cultivated with zero or minimal artificial assistance, ethically manufactured, sustainable, processed without chemical aid, with reusable by-products, and completely biodegradable. So, many new plant fibers, such as hemp, pineapple leaf fiber, banana fiber, bamboo fiber, kapok fiber, apocynum, mulberry bast fiber and so on, have been evaluated in recent years. Among the conventional and unconventio-nal fibers many of them are still in the research level. The commercialization of the product or development of fibers in the industrial aspect or in the bulk quantity is not achieved due to the technical problems or to inade-quate supply of raw material [2]. Especially in the unconventional fibers, the availability of the raw material is in abundance, whilst the utilization in the manufacturing sector is very meager. Hence, the opportunities in this unconventional fiber research opens a new era. At the same time, unlike the synthetic or artificial materials the impact of those products on the environment and ecosystem is considerably less. The research is focused on reducing the carbon footprint of the individual manufacturing process of the material, from plant cultivation to fabric manufacture rather than the cost reduction by using artificial materials and process.