The Jeans Innovation Center is a research and development facility based in Los Angeles. Experts from around the world gather here to develop new jeans that utilize innovative technologies and new materials.
Cultivating raw cotton requires sunshine, soil and water. Turning raw cotton into thread also requires lots of water during the indigo dyeing and the final washing processes, which is then drained as wastewater. Here’s three key points on water resource sustainability.
Sustainability Measure 1
Water for raw cotton cultivation
UNIQLO is a member of the non-profit Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) that supports sustainable cotton production. BCI seeks to spread better cotton cultivation techniques by teaching producers about appropriate water usage, and the uses of pesticides and other chemicals.
BCI English https://bettercotton.org/
Sustainability Measure 2
Water for fabric production
UNIQLO works with its partner factories to purify and reuse wastewater generated during production processes, and to reduce wastewater volumes.
Sustainability Measure 3
Water for garment production
Finished jeans are washed together
with stones in a washing machine
for a popular faded look.
Conventional jeans finishing processes use large volumes of water. The newly developed technology utilizes both advanced equipment such as laser processing and nanobubble ozone washing machines, as well as the expertise of designers to reduce water use by up to 99%*. The entire line up of UNIQLO jeans will be produced with this technology by 2020.
* When compared between UNIQLO 2017 and 2018 Men’s Regular Fit Jeans
UNIQLO replaced conventional pumice stones used in the jeans washing process with artificial eco stones which can be reused over a long period of time. By incorporating eco stones in our process, we eliminated the need for natural stone mining and reduced the amount of pumice stones in wastewater, significantly reducing our environmental impact.
By incorporating laser technology, we decreased the need for manual labor to distress jeans and reduced our use of water.