The textile and apparel industry is notorious for its contributions to the climate crisis, including, but not limited to, contamination of precious fresh water, excessive waste with much of it ending up in landfills, generation of greenhouse gases and reliance on petroleum-based fibers that do not biodegrade, and a continuing push to get consumers to buy cheaper, often trending, clothing that is only worn a few times before being discarded (fast fashion). Progress to mitigate these issues has been slow, but there are two recent developments that can help with some of these issues, including de-inking of fabric printed using dye sublimation, and a graphene-enhanced water filtering system that removes 79% to 85% of contaminates in wastewater, including toxic textile dyes. In this article, we provide information on these projects, both of which are in early stages of development. We hope this discussion both raises awareness of the sustainability challenges facing the textiles and apparel industry and some potential solutions which, if scaled sufficiently to be brought to market in a commercially viable manner, could help the industry make substantial progress against sustainability goals.

In the commercial printing industry, there was a significant effort made to ensure de-inkability of paper in order to be able to more effectively recycle it. This included removing ink applied with both analog and digital printing technologies. The industry responded relatively quickly to these challenges, including removing of UV-cured and toner-based inks. These days, you really don’t hear much discussion about de-inkability—it’s table stakes.

But with printed textiles, it’s a whole different story. Some 60% of printed textiles are polyester or poly blends, and much of that is printed or decorated with dye sublimation inks, both in analog and digital processes. Last spring at the ISA Sign Expo, and again last fall at PRINTING United, Mimaki introduced its Neo Chromato Process, a pilot project that removes ink dye-sublimated onto textiles, resulting in a white textile that can then be reprinted or more easily recycled.