Three news members join Microfibre Consortium

Three members have joined The Microfibre Consortium (TMC), a project involving outdoor brands and research partners to develop solutions to minimise microfibre release into the environment.

The American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC), Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) and Textile Exchange have signed up as research and affiliate members, boosting the consortium’s growing international scope to support greater global topic alignment and collaboration.

Following its launch by the European Outdoor Group in 2017, the Microfibre Consortium was founded as a stand-alone organisation in November 2018 and now incorporates a range of outdoor, fashion, sport and home textiles, brands, retailers and suppliers.

The consortium aims to align academic research with the reality of commercial supply chain production.

AATCC is joining TMC as a research member to continue the drive for global alignment, validation and longer term evolvement of a standardised methodology for achieving the shared aims.

RISE’s microfibre complements TMC workstreams and the organisation will also be a research member, enabling deeper strategic collaboration and expediting of research. The most immediate work will focus on the development of textile understanding on fibres and fabrics.

The Textile Exchange is joining as an affiliate member, ensuring topic dissemination across its own large network and helping to leverage complementary work.

Dr Jane Turnbull of the European Outdoor Group said: “Anyone who has been involved in standard development knows that these things take time, but the progress of the Cross Industry Agreement in the first 18 months continues to impress me. This is in no small part due to the passion and dedication of the institutions that have come together to work on this project.”

The new memberships will support the TMC three-year work agenda:
1. Development of a test method
2. Consumer facing understanding
• To support brands and retailers as they develop product that they can demonstrate releases less fibre during consumer wash laundry.
• In depth strategic research, which will identify the impact of varying fabric parameters, from yarn, to fabric structure and finishing, to draw conclusions and recommendations.
3. Manufacturing understanding
• To support the suppliers as they manufacture textiles, to understand the key areas of loss within production and how to develop best practice procedures to manage it.

Courtesy: Sports Textiles