An Empirical Analysis of Sustainable Denim Washing Technology in the Apparel Industries

Abstract

Over the last few decades, a lot of innovations and development works had already made denim “classic” in the fashion cycle. The modern consumers of today’s world are not only devoting themselves on clothing comfort but also emphasizing on economic and environmental sustainability. As a result, there has been increasing interests in terms of using environment friendly, non-toxic and highly biodegradable wet and dry process of denim washing technology, which is a combination of both the mechanical and chemical washing process. These are generally applied for denim garments and casual wearing. Without garment washing technology, apparels can’t draw proper attention on its end-users, just because it includes very few value added properties (such as hand feel, clothing comfort) with a view to attaining customer satisfaction. In addition, it improves the quality characteristics of apparels within low price margin. Some ecofriendly dry process of garments washing includes whiskering, hand sand, grinding, destroy effects. On the contrary, some wet process (such as enzyme wash, super white wash, bleach wash, acid wash, acid-stone wash, enzyme-stone wash and stone wash) utilizes very less amount of toxic dyes and chemicals. This research work simply made a general discussion related to the different types of garments dry and wet process. It also dealt with necessary apparatus, SOPs (Standard Operating Process), operational steps of sustainable and ecofriendly denim washing technology. Within limited global resources, it can help manufacturers and garments washing technologists to diversify the product and market of apparel trades.