Rotation vs. digital printing – which is more sustainable?

The understanding of textiles gets deeper in our company, as the textile engineering studies at Tampere University are progressing. This year we have conducted several tests on textile properties, for nonwovens, wovens and knits. One of the most interesting cases was to evaluate how sustainable the dresses of Nosh Company were according to the widely recognized ecodesign criteria for consumer textiles set by the Public Waste Agency of Flanders.

Naturally, several points were studied according to the ISO standards before declaring that the dresses of Nosh Company fulfilled the sustainability criteria. They included the following:

• Appearance after wash: shrinkage and spirality​
• Print durability​
• Colour fastness​
• Strength: bursting for very lightweight fabrics​
• Pilling resistance​
• Shape retention in washing/cleaning

The most interesting thing for a pattern design company’s point of view was to compare what kind of effect the different printing methods had, as one of the fabrics, 95% organic cotton and 5% elastane, had been printed with the rotation method whereas the other, 95% viscose and 5% elastane, with digital printing.

Both samples showed very good results for the color fastness for laundering: no staining and no significant color changes were observed. Color fastness to rubbing was good for both samples. It was slightly better for the sample that was printed digitally, especially color fastness to wet rubbing. However, it is good to keep in mind that the structure of cotton fiber is different from the structure of viscose fiber: there are more amorphous areas in the viscose fiber, so it can absorb dyes more effectively.

In the rotation printing process, a lot of water and chemicals are used, and plenty of excess dye pastes are thrown away as waste. In digital printing, no water is used, as the print is attached to the fabric the same way as a color copy machine prints on a piece of paper. With these facts in mind, we can easily say that digital printing is more sustainable.

Thank you Nosh Company Oy for providing the dresses to study, and the student team members Marjo and Sujin for smooth laboratory work!

Images: Sujin Kim

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Are you interested in getting your textiles studied? Get in touch, and let’s see if we can help you out!