New project will make viscose from grass
11/03/2015
Dutch sustainable textile company Dutch aWEARness and the South African companies EKCON and AlternaFruit have joined forces to set up a new consortium called INGCA. INGCA’s first move will be to plant miscanthus (also known as elephant grass, pictured) on areas of land covering 1,500 hectares in total in South Africa's Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.
The project’s aim is to use the grass to make recyclable textiles, biofuels, feedstock, plastics and building materials.
A team at the university of Wageningen in the Netherlands has developed a special type of micanthus that contains a high amount of cellulose. It is this cellulose that the consortium will use to create viscose. The project, dubbed ‘Grass for Sustainable Growth’, has the backing of the Dutch and South African governments.
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