Turning fiber into finer fabrics

March 10, 2021
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India has an extensive textile & apparel industry. We were always interested in what happens to waste that is generated from this industry.  This pre-consumer waste is constantly being generated from manufacturing of yarn, fabrics & garments.  Along with our manufacturing partners we introduced the idea of converting this cotton waste into yarn through the process of ring spinning. This is a system that produces finer counts of yarn. It was a challenge to utilize recycled fiber in ring spinning since this system enjoys a longer staple length of fiber where as recycled cotton fiber is typically of shorter staple since it comes from breaking of old yarns & fabrics. With our expert technical knowledge of the manufacturing process, extensive R&D, and dedication to the idea, we successfully developed ring-spun recycled cotton yarn.  This yarn is fine enough to produce premium fabrics and has the desired functionality to create long lasting apparel.

Recycled cotton fabrics for apparel did exist before, they were made on a yarn system know as ‘Open End’ spinning where the quality was not desirable and apparel made from it would have shorter wear life.  During our process of making quality ring-spun yarn, we blended recycle cotton with a carrier fiber that is long staple recycled polyester.  This blending gave added strength to our fabrics and at the same time improved a softer hand-feel.  It also allowed us to make lighter weight fabrics for summer season as well as heavier weight double counts for the winter.

We feel that timing of successfully developing our range of recycled products is good as the sportswear market does require sustainable fabrics that meet requirements of aesthetics as well as functionality.

Our customer, Toad & Co adopted our luxurious recycled fabrics just a few seasons back and today they have the largest offering of premium recycled cotton styles in the entire sportswear market.  We are proud of our team and our manufacturing partners. 

Recycling cotton helps reduce the need for virgin materials while also keeping waste out of landfills, thus limiting the environmental impact of textiles.

Cotton growing consumes enormous amounts of water Estimated 15,000 liters of water is utilized to produce 1Kg of fabric.

A daunting 60 billion kg of fabric is produced globally that consumes 9 trillion liters of water in a year.

10-20% of all textiles produced in the fashion industry ends up in post-industrial waste.

In 2017, Via Joe’s recycled 10,000Kgs of fabric from post-industrial textile waste saving 150 million liters of water.