Textile Products for Sustainable Cities from Zorlu Tekstil
With the Paris Climate Agreement and the EU Green Deal, the concept of sustainability becomes more important. Zorlu Tekstil Group, which has carried out pioneering works in Turkey by including sustainability studies, has been making very serious investments in the last 5 years, especially regarding the Smart Life 2030 strategy. Zorlu Textile which completing the Sustainable Textile Production Certification process, is a textile manufacturer that produces with the ‘Made in Green’ label used with the Standard 100 by Oeko-Tex and STeP by Oeko-Tex Certificates.
Stating that they started the green transformation many years ago and that they will adapt to the EU Green Deal very quickly with the infrastructure they have, Zorlu Holding Textile Group President Necat Altın, “We are in a period that factories and companies that cannot adapt to sustainability criteria and cannot keep up with digital transformation in the coming period will not be able to survive. We, as Zorlu Holding Textile Group, came a long way with the ‘Clean Production Project’, which we started 3 years before the ‘Green Reconciliation Action Plan’ was published. In order to reduce the carbon footprint demanded by the Green Deal, we made an energy map of our production facilities with this project. We have determined what kind of improvements we can make in which process.
We have solved one of the most critical issues, monitoring, with our online energy tracking system, which we call ‘Cleaner Production Software’. Thanks to this software, we monitor online how much water and energy is consumed at every point of our factories and facilities, and calculate on a product basis. We carry out important works in Turkey and in the world with our Ecodesign products, in which the carbon footprint is reduced by at least 50 percent. Today, we obtain our energy from renewable sources. For the upcoming period, both solar power plants and the use of solar energy in production have been put on the agenda and we have started feasibility studies on this subject.” said.
As a first in Europe and Turkey, the production of polyester yarn from 100% pet bottle started
Zorlu Holding Textile Group invests in the circular economy as an integral part of sustainability in line with its Smart Life 2030 strategy. The company, plays an active role not only in Turkey but also in the world, by producing polyester yarn from PET bottle waste and PLA yarn from agricultural products. Based on this idea, the Polymer Recycling Facility, which was become a part of an investment of 10 million dollars, broke new ground in Europe and Turkey and started producing polyester yarn from 100% plastic bottles. With this investment, approximately 110,000 plastic bottles, which are non-biodegradable in nature and consumer waste, will be reduced for the production of 1 Ton of recycled yarn.
“We will produce home textiles for sustainable cities with LEED-BREEAM Certificate”
Necat Altın continued his words as follows: “We have set green transformation targets on many topics such as process optimizations to reduce carbon emission, development of products with reduced carbon emission, preparing a climate change action plan from renewable energy use and providing training on this subject and publishing a CDP report. With this understanding, we aim to implement many green transformation-oriented innovations by 2025, ranging from producing home textiles for LEED-BREEAM Certified sustainable cities.”
