Description: In the early 1990s, Designtex partnered with architect William McDonough, chemist Michael Braungart and Swiss mill Rohner to develop a compostable upholstery fabric. Using McDonough and Braungart’s design principle of “waste=food,” the textile was designed to break down and return safely to the earth after its useful life – its nutrients thereby becoming “food” for the soil. This concept of the biological nutrient was based on nature’s own cycles. In order for the textile to return safely to the earth, however, every input had to be analyzed, from the raw materials (wool and ramie, a natural plant fiber) to the dyestuffs and other process chemicals. Braungart worked with chemical company Ciba’s list of dyestuffs, and from over 1,600 possibilities, he selected a mere 38 that he deemed safe for human and environmental health. This optimization of the chemistry caused a change in the mill's effluent; after switching to the new chemistry, the water flowing out of the mill was actually cleaner than the inflowing water. Other portions of the manufacturing process at Rohner underwent big changes as well. Located in a small farming community in Switzerland, the mill had already been operating under high environmental standards. However, government regulations had recently become stricter, and deemed textile scraps from the weaving process to be hazardous waste. The mill was forced to export the scrap to Spain for disposal. However, with the production of the new fabrics designed to safely biodegrade, the mill was able to save the scraps and make them into felt. This felt was used by local strawberry farmers as ground cover their crops, and the mill was saved the costly disposal fees related to previous textile constructions. The result of this collaboration produced the first Climatex® Lifecycle™ upholstery collection, launched by Designtex in 1995. We continue to add collections to our Climatex offering. Today MBDC’s protocol is manifested in a certification called Cradle to Cradle (C2C), for which this product receives a Gold rating. The seven stages of Environmental Design bring awareness to each step in the product lifecycle, and create opportunities for closing the loop. Climatex Lifecycle Upholstery achieves its Environmental Design status for the following criteria: Rapidly Renewable Ingredients, Compatible for Closed Loop, Chemically Optimized, Energy Use, Water Use, Reutilization of Production Waste, Low Emitting, Compostable.
MasterFormat Number(s): 12 05 13