Search Results for: Environmental health

INTRODUCTION

Think of finishing and some consumers may conclude that integrating chemicals with or within fibres will always be the most effective way to create a performance or protective textile. But the reality is that applying coatings to textiles and yarns is anything but superficial as a finishing technique.…

The increasing decriminalisation and legalisation of cannabis as a recreational and medicinal substance has encouraged the liberalisation of hemp as a fibre crop, whose use in some jurisdictions had been restricted because of laws against the plant’s chemically-active ingredients.

This is starting to change, most notably in the USA, which used to have severe anti-marijuana laws, but which now has 18 states that have legalised recreational cannabis use.…

The relationship between the USA textile industry and its counterparts in Latin America has never been straightforward, given the US exports fabrics and fibre to its neighbours as well as importing apparel, but the Covid-19 pandemic has increased complexity in this relationship.…

INTRODUCTION

Textile and clothing companies are well aware of two major trends driving sales in the industry – sustainability and digitisation. One is driven by the need to adopt sustainable manufacturing processes and materials, to boost sales amongst environmentally conscious consumers and reduce financial and regulatory costs associated with pollution and carbon emissions.…

Argentina has potential to develop a lucrative business for exporting guanaco fibre, one of the finest in the world, but it will take investment, government support and marketing to make it happen, experts say.
“The medium and long-term market is very promising since these products go to a sector that values social, environmental and cultural sustainability, something that is increasingly rooted in middle- and high-income sectors,” Luciano Galfione, CEO of Textil de los Andes (TexAndes), a maker of guanaco and other natural fibres and yarns in San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca in north-western Argentina, told Twist International.…

The European Commission has warned that European Union (EU) member states are making “alarmingly slow progress” in reviewing the safety of active biocidal substances on sale before May 2000 – covering most products on sale. In a review of the operation of the EU biocidal product regulation (BPR) of 2012, the Commission said that while the system was “fully operational”, there has been a “substantial delay in active substance approval,” whose completion deadline has already been extended from 2014 to 2024.…

With its complex supply and distribution chain, the international knitwear sector fosters innovation, with commercial partners cross-fertilising technical and design ideas that span digitisation and mechanical smarts, as well as consumer-focused creativity.

One key area of innovation in the past year has been warp knitting – for instance by leading northern Italian warp seamless knitwear manufacturer Cifra (1), which last December (2020) launched an innovative and sustainable garment concept for women, spanning beachwear, athleisure bodywear and lingerie.…

A key political question emerging from the Coronavirus pandemic has been how the disease might readjust relations between this world’s two largest powers – the United States and China. The two countries have had two very different experiences of Covid-19, which reflect their contrasting social and political systems.…

A friend from Syria once told me of a 20-year-old man, an only child, who left his country, having been ordered to emigrate by his father in fear of the frenzy and killing in his country’s civil war. He moved to the comparative calm of Beirut, Lebanon.…

While the Arab world certainly has a political culture of its own, there are many universal human truths that its politics shares with the rest of the globe, even if – perhaps – tensions can be more intense in this region than others.…