February 29, 2012—Nike Inc. plans to manufacturer many of its athletic products in a way that illustrates its desire to use sustainable business practices and ability to quickly leverage new technologies.
The company recently announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with DyeCoo Textile Systems B.V., a Netherlands-based company that has developed and built the first commercially available waterless textile-dyeing machines. By using recycled carbon dioxide, DyeCoo’s technology eliminates the use of water in the textile-dyeing process.
Conventional textile dyeing reportedly requires substantial amounts of water. On average, an estimated 100-150 liters of water is needed to process one kilogram of textile materials today, says Nike. Industry analysts estimate that more than 39 million tons of polyester will be dyed annually by 2015. Instead of water, DyeCoo uses supercritical fluid carbon dioxide, or “SCF” CO2 dyeing technology, whence comes the company’s name.
Nike says it expects DyeCoo’s technology to have a particularly positive impact in Asia, where much of the world’s textile dyeing occurs. As this technology is brought to scale, large amounts of water used in conventional textile dyeing will no longer be needed, nor will the commensurate use of fossil fuel-generated energy be required to heat such large sums of water. The removal of water from the textile dyeing process is also said to eliminate the risk of effluent discharge, a known environmental hazard. The CO2 used in DyeCoo’s dyeing process is also reclaimed and reused.
Nike has been exploring this technology for the past eight years and expects to showcase apparel using textiles dyed without water at events later this year, with an eye towards scaling the technology for larger production volumes.
