Why Sustainable Design Was Key at This Year’s Top Textiles Fair
The world’s largest home textiles trade fair, Heimtextil 2020, highlighted real solutions to environmental problems
Thomas Helbing
15 January 2020
Heimtextil (Frankfurt, Germany, January 7-10, 2020), the world’s largest trade fair for home textiles, marked its 50th anniversary this year. While celebrating its successful history, it also looked to the future with new decorative fabrics, trendy wallpapers and chic textiles that will bring something different to our homes.
Most importantly, it looked to the environment, with an emphasis on sustainable products among its exhibitors and a new sustainability manifesto from the fair organisers.
Most importantly, it looked to the environment, with an emphasis on sustainable products among its exhibitors and a new sustainability manifesto from the fair organisers.
Nearly 3,000 exhibitors at Heimtextil 2020 showed off the latest in upholstery, curtains and decorative fabrics, as well as blankets, cushion covers, bed linen, towels and wallpaper. Pictured is the booth of Hafizia, a textile manufacturer from India. Sustainability was a running theme in the exhibition halls.
A team of trend and colour experts from Stijlinstituut Amsterdam, London-based studio Franklin Till, and Danish agency SPOTT put together a walk-through trend book in the fair’s Trend Space, organised around five themed areas.
“Textile waste isn’t just a problem in the fashion industry,” says Amy Radcliffe, insight editor at Franklin Till, in her lecture Radical Matter: Rethinking Materials for a Sustainable Future. The entire textile industry has to be more responsible, and we all need to think more about what materials we want to have in our homes and how we deal with them.
“Our previous behaviour is no longer acceptable,” she says. “While we’re running out of raw materials, we’re also producing huge amounts of waste.”
“Textile waste isn’t just a problem in the fashion industry,” says Amy Radcliffe, insight editor at Franklin Till, in her lecture Radical Matter: Rethinking Materials for a Sustainable Future. The entire textile industry has to be more responsible, and we all need to think more about what materials we want to have in our homes and how we deal with them.
“Our previous behaviour is no longer acceptable,” she says. “While we’re running out of raw materials, we’re also producing huge amounts of waste.”
The trends overview included a material library of innovative, sustainable fibres.
One solution: Waste as a resource
Innovative designers and manufacturers showed what good materials of the future, alternative production systems and material cycles could look like in the material exhibit, Future Material Library, set up by Franklin Till. Their exhibits included:
One solution: Waste as a resource
Innovative designers and manufacturers showed what good materials of the future, alternative production systems and material cycles could look like in the material exhibit, Future Material Library, set up by Franklin Till. Their exhibits included:
- Materials that grow just like fruits and vegetables. For example, Malai (pictured) is a material produced in a laboratory by bacteria ‘fed’ with waste coconut water. After a finishing and drying process, it yields a kind of bio-pulp reminiscent of tear-resistant paper or synthetic leather.
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- Faber Futures uses bacteria that produce natural colour pigments and non-toxic chemicals to create less pollutant fabric dye. The results are pictured here.
- There were also new materials made from food waste. Orange Fiber produces fabric spun from the remains of oranges used for juicing. So far, it’s only been used for clothing fabric, but it could also be used to produce delicate curtains and other decorative fabrics.
- Austrian manufacturer Organoid literally brings nature into houses by pressing hay, wildflowers and moss into wafer-thin pieces, which are applied to a substrate such as flax non-woven fabric, chipboard or adhesive film. Hay wallpaper is healthy and offers not only a visual and tactile experience, but an olfactory one, too, as it actually smells of wildflowers and hay.
Fibres and fabrics made from recycled plastic were omnipresent at Heimtextil, as seen here at the booth of the Spanish textile manufacturer Hispano Tex.
Recycling is good, but no waste is better
Many manufacturers seem to have woken up to environmental issues. Visitors at Heimtextil were presented with an endless array of materials made from recycled plastic bottles and textile waste.
This saves limited natural resources, because new products are created from waste. However, it’s not necessarily always environmentally friendly, as chemicals and a large amount of energy may be required in order to turn the waste into a textile.
Manufacturer Deco Design Fürus from Krefeld went another way. Company owner and textile expert Manuel Schweizer spent seven years researching a method that goes beyond the usual recycling processes. He ultimately came across the cradle-to-cradle principle, in which the materials in a product are reused at the end of its life, and no waste is produced at all.
Recycling is good, but no waste is better
Many manufacturers seem to have woken up to environmental issues. Visitors at Heimtextil were presented with an endless array of materials made from recycled plastic bottles and textile waste.
This saves limited natural resources, because new products are created from waste. However, it’s not necessarily always environmentally friendly, as chemicals and a large amount of energy may be required in order to turn the waste into a textile.
Manufacturer Deco Design Fürus from Krefeld went another way. Company owner and textile expert Manuel Schweizer spent seven years researching a method that goes beyond the usual recycling processes. He ultimately came across the cradle-to-cradle principle, in which the materials in a product are reused at the end of its life, and no waste is produced at all.
Deco Design Fürus received the gold Cradle to Cradle certification for its OceanSafe collection. Qualification for these certifications is evaluated by independent assessors, and the requirements are particularly high, because the entire product and manufacturing cycle is examined.
At Heimtextil, Deco Design Fürus displayed a small collection of bed linen, towels, curtains and decorative fabrics under its OceanSafe label. The products are not only organic, but even compostable. After use, they don’t end up being thrown in the bin or laboriously recycled; instead, micro-organisms convert them back into biomass. This is also what happens to these products naturally in the soil or the ocean. This solves the problem of plastic’s long half-life. Even the line’s synthetic fibres, produced from petroleum, break down in this biological process.
In addition, the company is now using food waste to make new curtains and bed covers. “If only good ‘ingredients’ come in at the beginning, then only good waste will come out at the end,” Schweizer says.
At Heimtextil, Deco Design Fürus displayed a small collection of bed linen, towels, curtains and decorative fabrics under its OceanSafe label. The products are not only organic, but even compostable. After use, they don’t end up being thrown in the bin or laboriously recycled; instead, micro-organisms convert them back into biomass. This is also what happens to these products naturally in the soil or the ocean. This solves the problem of plastic’s long half-life. Even the line’s synthetic fibres, produced from petroleum, break down in this biological process.
In addition, the company is now using food waste to make new curtains and bed covers. “If only good ‘ingredients’ come in at the beginning, then only good waste will come out at the end,” Schweizer says.
CO2-adjusted pricing for furniture and home décor?
In her home textile lecture, Climate Consumerism, trend researcher and CEO of SPOTT Anja Bisgaard Gaede suggests the green zeitgeist will set the tone for the next decade.
“Yes, consumers are starting to rethink and take more responsibility for our environment. And manufacturers are responding to this with innovative, more environmentally friendly materials,” she says. “But wouldn’t it also be more logical to price products based on their carbon footprint?” Products that pollute less or not at all should be cheaper than environmentally harmful ones. Unfortunately, the opposite is often true today.
Therefore, until the day when we can place carbon price tags on furniture and home accessories, we will hopefully pay more attention to the sustainability of the fabrics in our homes – for the environment’s sake.
Tell us…
Would you like to know more about sustainable fabrics? Share your thoughts in the Comments section.
In her home textile lecture, Climate Consumerism, trend researcher and CEO of SPOTT Anja Bisgaard Gaede suggests the green zeitgeist will set the tone for the next decade.
“Yes, consumers are starting to rethink and take more responsibility for our environment. And manufacturers are responding to this with innovative, more environmentally friendly materials,” she says. “But wouldn’t it also be more logical to price products based on their carbon footprint?” Products that pollute less or not at all should be cheaper than environmentally harmful ones. Unfortunately, the opposite is often true today.
Therefore, until the day when we can place carbon price tags on furniture and home accessories, we will hopefully pay more attention to the sustainability of the fabrics in our homes – for the environment’s sake.
Tell us…
Would you like to know more about sustainable fabrics? Share your thoughts in the Comments section.
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Great - I think we all need to know more about this and I would love to see more articles about it.
Thank you for this article. It’s great to learn about the latest fabric trends from Heimtextil. Love the examples here. Its an inspiration to all of us. I was in Heimtextil years ago and will never forget seing the many examples of the latest fabric. It was a WOW at every booth.
These are such important steps in reducing our demands on the environment and the fabrics and colours look so beautiful also. Well done once again Europe. I’m looking forward to seeing these materials on our shelves soon.