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Each month Advanced Textiles Source features a topic of interest in the industry. It’s a useful way for us organize our publication and ensure that we continue to provide you with interesting unique content in our “Featured” section. This month the topic is sustainability. We always cover news relevant to sustainability issues in our “Eco Note” section, but this month our features (at the top of the home page) are also on this subject.
And something else happened: I could have put several stories that also fit in “In the Industry” or “What’s New?” in the Eco Note section. In fact, it wouldn’t have been difficult to have literally all the new content posted around this launch relevant to this topic.
That says something significant to me about this industry. Sustainability is not a niche or a fad. Industry participants at every level are concerned with the broadest interpretation of environmentally responsible processes and materials.
From research in nanowebs at Texas Tech University (“Nanowebs go green”) to educating manufacturers and end consumers about what sustainability really means (“The sustainability challenge”), there are companies and institutions—large and small—working to provide clarity, transparency and truly sustainable products, all up and down the value chain. These are the experts. You’ll find many of them and their products referenced in articles under the Eco Note tab, in particular. You can also search “sustainable,” “eco-friendly” or “environmentally friendly” on this site and find dozens more articles about relevant research, products and processes.
There isn’t a single, perfect way to improve one’s sustainability profile; it’s a large and complex issue for any company, but there are so many resources now available to help in the research, planning and organization of a more sustainable operation. The important thing is to begin—and then keep going.