Tencel features in eco-design awards
Lenzing’s lyocell fibre Tencel featured at Austria’s first eco-fashion design competition this autumn.
Vienna-based designer Karin Maislinger won first prize for a piece of couture she called ‘Brimstone Butterfly’.
For
the competition, Lenzing provided fabrics made by Hämmerle and Huber Textil from Tencel.
The two judges, Lisa Niedermayr and Barbara Denk, were deliberately looking for alternative and Austrian-made fibres. Lisa Niedermayr, textile expert at the Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna, said: “Only 2%–5% of the cotton produced worldwide is organic, far too little to meet demand.“
And, in explaining why she thought it was important to look at alternative fibres, environmental consultant Michaela Knieli commented: “A quarter of global pesticide production goes into cotton production. Consumption of energy and water is immense, and the land resources tied up in cotton production are huge.”
The main resource for the production of Tencel is eucalyptus and, Lenzing says, it requires up to 20 times less water than cotton, including pulp production.
