TW Special Report
Italian textile machinery manufacturers play a major role in promoting new trends linked to green technologies in their manufacturing sector. The playing field on which the textile industry is hedging its competitive edge is environmental, economic and social sustainability. Regulations and new environmental legislation, also applied to the textile sector and urged on by environmental movements and precautionary policies on chemical safety standards for major brands, have accelerated the change in the entire textile supply chain, which is now more sensitive than ever to these issues.
Italy’s textile machinery manufacturers in the various textile manufacturing segments — from spinning and knitting to weaving and finishing — now provide technology solutions capable of greatly reducing the emission of or use of hazardous substances in production processes and ensuring greater water savings along with improved energy efficiency in production processes.
Within this context, ACIMIT — the Association of Italian Textile Machinery Manufacturers — has launched the “Sustainable Technologies” project, coordinated by the RINA certification body, in an effort to develop and promote key sustainability issues for the textile industry. The gold standard of the “Sustainable Technologies” project is the Green Label — a voluntary declaration by Italian textile machinery manufacturers designed to highlight the energy and/or environmental performance of a given machine, calculated in reference to a production cycle defined by the manufacturer for labeled machinery.
The purpose of the Green Label is to identify and easily communicate the energy and environmental performance of a textile machine with reference to a process chosen by the manufacturer as a comparison parameter. Thus, in the absence of internationally recognized standards for classifying energy and/or environmental performance for textile machinery, Italian manufacturers are promoting a tool that aims to highlight some machinery performance data. Awareness of achievements in technological excellence, including in terms of sustainability, is one of the Italian textile machinery sector’s elements of strength, placing it at the forefront of sustainable technological solutions to support the textile industry. In particular, the quantity of equivalent emissions of carbon dioxide — Carbon Footprint – CFP — produced during the machinery’s operation, is the parameter chosen to provide a value to the eco-efficiency of the labeled machinery.
RINA, an Italy-based international certification body, has validated the process of issuing the Green Label and its test measurements. On the basis of a standardized and certified procedure, RINA verifies both the way in which parameters are measured, and the operating conditions of the machines being labeled. At the end of the on-site audits, RINA issues a certificate of conformity that certifies compliance with the regulation by member companies and the truthfulness of the performance data of Green Label certifications issued.
To promote the genesis of the Green Label, ACIMIT — in collaboration with the Italian Trade Agency (ITA) — will participate in the 2022 edition of Techtextil North America in Atlanta, with an Italian Pavilion hosting 17 Italian companies. During the event, ACIMIT and ITA representatives will be available to provide more information regarding the project. If you attend the show, be sure to stop by booth 2133, 2233 and 2333 to discover more.
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This sponsored content was provided by the Italian Trade Agency.
April 26, 2022
