Sustainability of Cellulosic Fibres, and their Production Systems and Technologies

The textile industry will face the next biggest challenge after the industrial revolution when the raw materials of the synthetics (non-renewable petrochemicals) start to run off. Considering the fact that about 60.6% of the fibres consumed in 2009 are produced from petrochemical sources, it is clear that a high dependence of the textile industry on crude is very concrete. Cotton, the second largest consumed fibre with around 32% share in the global fibre consumption in 2009, doesn't have a promising future scope for growth. Some of the reasons are its productivity already being affected due to climate change, larger land demand for food and biofuels production, and also land needs for growing population around the world. A solution in the foreseeable future can only be possible with manufactured fibres made from renewable resources like cellulose. This work is an investigation on the sustainability of the cellulosic fibres' (including cotton) production systems and technologies. The investigation is carried by applying the UN’s working list of indicators of sustainable development on the member countries of the United Nations segmented into country blocks in this work. A scoring method has been introduced to quantify the sustainability indicators. The sustainability of viscose and lyocell production systems along with that of cotton and polyester in different coun-try blocks were quantified using the index and compared. It has been found that Block 1 countries (the developed nations of the world) and Block 2 countries (highly populated and developing nations of the world), as explained in this work, have respectively the most conducive conditions and least conducive conditions to run any fibre production system sustainably. Lyocell is more sustainable than viscose anywhere in the world. However, the sustainability of any cellulosic fibre production system, including Lyocell, can substantially be increased by using wood pulps also from temperate forests. Out of the four fibre production systems cotton seems to be most un-sustainable, and polyester seems to be the most sustainable. /Kir1