CALGARY - Nonwovens fabrics manufacturer Roswell Textiles has announced the full commercial launch of Ecofuse, a plant based, low carbon, meltblown material which as well as providing carbon offsets, is designed to replace incumbent synthetic nonwoven materials with more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative.
Roswell Textiles developed, commercialized, and scaled Canada's first domestic supply of synthetic meltblown fabric during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company was able to scale production quickly and efficiently, by engineering and manufacturing its own nonwoven production equipment in-house and making its first commercial sale of Canadian produced meltblown material in just two months.
Building on this process, the company has now launched what it calls the 'next generation' of high performance and technical nonwoven materials under the brand name of Ecofuse.
Roswell says it utilizes proprietary production technologies that allow for the technical processing of biopolymers to achieve the high-performance requirements in nonwoven materials that have previously been impossible to achieve at commercial scale. These highly engineered materials are said to possess similar technical specifications as synthetic, polypropylene materials but with a 65% net carbon reduction, contributing to a more sustainable and circular economy, the company says.
Ecofuse materials are currently being used by Roswell Textile's strategic partners and clients to decrease the carbon footprint of their products. Applications are currently in medical filtration, water filtration and residential filtration applications with additional commercialization processes underway for the use of Ecofuse materials in hygiene, food and beverage packaging as well as in construction materials. Ecofuse meltblown materials, currently in commercial use in regulated medical applications, are certified to be 100% biobased by the United States Department of Agriculture BioPreferred Program.
The fabrics are also being used to increase OEM's accomplishment of net zero carbon emissions in their product lines, as well as helping companies and industries reduce their carbon emissions to be in compliance with federally and internationally mandated carbon reduction policies. Ecofuse aligns with The Paris Agreement, COP26 Initiatives, WHO, the Canadian Governments 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, US federal executive orders and legislation (the Federal Buy Clean Initiative, Inflation Reduction Act, Building a Clean Energy Economy, and sustainable procurement initiatives).
"It is our belief that the Ecofuse materials can drive meaningful and substantial change in the way in which we manufacture products, helping to reduce our collective carbon footprint by simply utilizing materials that are plant based and return to the environment in a more sustainable circular process versus synthetic plastics that will take thousands of years to degrade in our landfills," says Kyle Fiolka, President of Roswell Textiles and chief innovation officer of PADM Group. "Small steps, like replacing the hundreds of thousands of tons of synthetic materials in HVAC filters with a plant based, sustainable alternative like Ecofuse, can help reduce the overall net carbon footprint of that product. We are thrilled to helping our partners achieve substantial outcomes in reducing their carbon emissions."
