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Sustainability in the textiles industry is a growing concern with changing regulations and global supply chains. New technologies and processes, however, are blossoming to replace materials considered toxic, reduce water consumption and create safer environments for workers and consumers. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence technology is developing fast, offering tools to streamline work and support research and development.
AI tools anyone can use
Adam Penner, founder and principal consultant, AP Consulting, spoke on the topic, “Practical tools to streamline your business,” but he also offered a “hands-on starting point” to enter the world of AI. “It’s not the future,” he says. “It’s the present and it’s here.”
AI can make daily activities, such as autocomplete, photo tagging and spam filtering, more convenient. Taking over busy-work, so humans can focus on more creative and meaningful tasks, can be a big time-saver, he says, at little expense to the user.
He started with Chat GPT, an AI tool that can help with various work-related tasks. He’s used it for constructing the basic terms for an estimate from “rough notes,” including adding “anything I might forget,” he says. And there’s no need to take meeting notes; AI can record and transcribe them for you. It can also improve the language you use in email messages, which is especially important if you’re upset, he says. Chat GPT will correct it, “so the anger doesn’t come through.”
AI is getting easier to use, too, as it is now built into tools we already use, such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, with no coding required and at minimal expense. It also has “massive computing power” today, and user-friendly interfaces that respond to natural language prompts.
“If you can text, you can use AI,” he says, and with “integration everywhere,” users can connect AI to emails, calendars, digital design tools, and CRMs.
AI can also help with research and education, but there are some risks, so he warns of over-reliance and using AI for expert advice. “It’s not a lawyer or an engineer,” he says. And it’s important to remember that, “anything you put in there could end up somewhere else.” He also cautions about double-checking copyrights and source reliability before publishing AI generated content.
The best way to get to know AI is to just try it, and he suggests the following tools for certain tasks:
- ChatGPT: general-purpose, a writing, analysis and automation assistant
- Gemini: Google’s AI, built into Gmail, Docs, and Sheets
- Claude: Summarizing and managing complex documents
- CoPilot: Microsoft’s AI assistant for Word, Excel and Outlook
- Perplexity: Fast, cited research assistant
“Go out there and play with it,” he says. “There’s no better substitute for learning it.”
Sharing AI ideas
In a panel discussion, the audience, as active participants, discussed “AI and everyday workflow,” with Paige Mullis, senior sales executive at MMI Textiles, moderating. Panelist Xochil Herrera Scheer, who works independently in pattern making and product development through her company, The Chicago Pattern Maker, says she first used it for taking notes and “started experimenting with software for pattern making.”
Panelist Mary Reardon, vice president textile innovation, MMI, say she uses Chat GPT to reword messages and find information. “In the past it was a Google search, but AI is so much faster.” Audience members came up with their own suggestions. Said one software designer, “Don’t struggle against it; use it.”
Scheer says AI is a great tool to make changes in design, such as color, or generating marketing or website copy. However, it’s necessary to edit, “when the copy sounds like AI, not like a real person.”
Should you keep the memory on when using AI? Most people at this session indicated that they do. Scheer says, “The more you work with it, the more it remembers you, and the better it will work for you.” However, material will recycle, so Reardon adds, “It’s trained to know what you like to hear, so if you keep ‘hearing yourself,’ turn off the memory and prompt again.”
There is also a sustainability issue due to the amount of energy AI consumes. “It’s something to consider before using [AI], if you don’t really need to,” Scheer says.
As an early open source model, Chat GPT is a frequent first-use tool, but panelists and attendees also suggested additional AI tools, including NotebookLM for research and other tasks; Nano Banana for image editing; Pressie for presentations; and Firefly for meeting transcriptions.
New process for cotton retains its finish layer
FIBRE52™ Cotton, headquartered in Houston, Texas, has developed a less harsh process and chemistry for cotton and cellulose fibers that keeps cotton’s own finish layer, allowing for the creation of natural-fiber performance wear, among other potential applications.
Textile material scientist Hasan Shahariar, Ph.D., spoke at the ETC on how his company’s processing method benefits the fiber, and by extension the wearer by not scouring away the waxy coating naturally present on the cotton fiber, and making good use of its lumen in the center.
“How nature designed the fiber actually had a reason,” he says. Traditional processing methods scour away the waxy cuticle layer of the cotton fiber through a high-alkaline process at about 100 C (212 F) to clean it and prepare it for bleaching and dyeing. But scouring damages the outside of the fiber through removing this layer, and dyeing makes it rough, necessitating the addition of softeners.
The Fibre52 chemistry and process bypasses these issues, is pH neutral, still allows for uniformity in dyeing, and is compatible with existing machinery, he says. It works “inside-out” around 65 C–75 C (149 F–167 F), saving energy—and thus money and carbon emissions. It also uses less water than conventional processes, and because cotton’s waxy coating remains, silicone softener finishing agents don’t have to be added. More of each fiber is retained, making it thicker and stronger than a scoured fiber, since its mechanical properties haven’t been damaged.
After dyeing, the central lumen of the Fibre52-processed fiber doesn’t collapse as much as in those conventionally processed, allowing the fiber to transmit moisture vapor away from the wearer at a steady rate rather than allowing it to build up next to the skin. The fiber’s retained waxy outer layer repels liquid and reduces surface tension and friction, so the fabric doesn’t get sweat-soaked, preventing a chilling effect on the wearer. Shahariar also presented data on thermal and evaporative behavior and vapor transmission rates, comparing polyester, conventional cotton and Fibre52-processed cotton.
He says the startup is open to research applications and collaboration in investigating additional uses for Fibre52 cotton. The company has started working with wovens, beginning with bedsheets; it’s open to its use in nonwovens and knits also, with possible applications in defense, activewear, and health and beauty. “We do not know how to extend these applications,” he says. “That is why we are here.”
Zylotex seeks funding for hemp lyocell production
Potential gaps in the fiber market can create big opportunities, and Leila Lawson, founder of Zylotex Inc., based in Edmonton, Alta., Canada, wants to take advantage of this with hemp.
Lawson predicts there will be a “cotton gap” in the future—the difference between supply and demand—that hemp lyocell could fill. Lawson also sees textile hemp as serving a need for companies that are increasingly looking for more sustainable, biodegradable or natural options for the fibers that comprise their fabrics.
“People are hungry for this type of alternative,” she says. Increased use of hemp could also spare old-growth forests. “We can be more cost competitive than wood pulp,” she adds, because of a less intensive process that the company will use for processing.
The company will create its ZyloPulp™ using bast fibers from existing hemp seed oil crops and then spin it to create Zylotex® fiber. Because hemp bast fibers are longer and thicker- walled than wood and more absorbent, their use results in hemp lyocell being stronger than alternatives. “We call it the natural cellulosic rebar of the world,” she says.
Trying to “cottonize” hemp fibers from the plants grown for industrial uses—such as oilseed, hemp hearts and other products—is challenging. The fibers are packed tightly together in the plant with lignin between them, coating the cellulose and resulting in a stiff, coarse fiber. The typical process to soften these fibers is a chemical-based method that is water- and energy-intensive.
But Zylotex has an exclusive agreement with Plantae Technologies to use its proprietary mechanical method to separate the bast fiber from the hurd. The ZyloPulp process separates out the lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose/pectin, extracts and inorganic metals, which plants absorb naturally from the environment. All of the byproducts have uses in industry, and the pulp can become fibers for a full gamut of products, from nonwovens such as geosynthetics, to industrial textiles such as an edible bale wrap for cattle feed and even consumer textiles.
Lawson is enthusiastic about the possibility of creating a Canadian-sourced textile supply chain that doesn’t rely on fossil fuel-based components, doesn’t shed microplastics, and uses less pesticides and water than growing cotton. The lyocell process is also less toxic than creating viscose.
Zylotex is seeking angel investors to raise a more than CA$3.75-million match in order to unlock public funding. The company’s short-term goals include finalizing the plan for the demonstration facility in 2026 and starting to produce ZyloPulp and Zylotex fiber in 2027. The company has offtake agreements for more than the 1,200 tons per year expected to be produced by its pilot plant.
“There’s a huge opportunity here,” she says.
Janet Preus is senior editor of Textile Technology Source. She can be reached at janet.preus@textiles.org. Cathy Jones is senior editor of Specialty Fabrics Review.