O Ecotextiles: “Indulgent yet responsible”
Patty and Leigh Anne founded the company to make the whole world safer while making our personal environments more beautiful.
After forming O Ecotextiles in 2004, they began a world-wide search for manufacturing partners interested in a cradle-to-cradle process of creating no-impact, perfectly safe, incredibly luxurious fabrics.
They began working with people around the world: Romanian farmers who grew hemp stalks; a Japanese mill owner committed to “green” processes, even new methods such as using ozone to bleach fabric; a 100-year-old Italian mill that produces no wastewater; a Chilean mill shifting to entirely green processes; an Italian dye house that produces biodegradable, heavy-metal free textiles.
The first fabrics coming out are, as the sisters envisioned, sophisticated, stylish and green:
- All of the mills O Ecotextiles uses have wastewater treatment in place. Every 25 meters of an O Ecotextiles sofa fabric prevents 2,300 liters of chemically infused effluent – about the size of a California hot tub and containing from 1 to 10 kg of toxic chemicals – from entering the environment.
- Chlorine bleach is known to be harmful to the environment and to consumers, so in O Ecotextiles’ mills, the bleaching method of choice is oxygen-based (hydrogen peroxide) and the wastewater is treated. In one mill, ozone, a very new technology, is used for bleaching.
- Rather than using harsh chemicals to soften and finish our fabrics, O Ecotextiles’ finish is made of bee’s wax, aloe vera and Vitamin E.
- O Ecotextiles is testing some new flame retardant finishes that claim to be free of VOCss, PBDEss, deca-BFRss or brominated based chemicals.
