Don’t Get Hosed on Sustainability: The True Eco Impact of Going Digital

There are many vital reasons we need water. We need to consume water ourselves, to hydrate our bodies. We need water to make the crops grow. We need water to bathe, to bake bread, to fuel energy production—literally thousands of uses, on a global scale.

If we can produce our clothing without hogging the water supply…shouldn’t we?

While mass industrialization has worked wonders for making our lives infinitely more comfortable than they once were, it certainly has brought its share of downsides, as well. For example, in recent decades fashion production has skyrocketed worldwide, and with it wasteful overproduction and “fast fashion” that satisfies immediate demand and leaves a pile of unwanted clothing in its wake.

“Sustainability” has long been a key message of fashion and textile marketing, but its influence in driving real change has been anything but consistent. “Greenwashing,” or taking superficial steps to make claims of eco-conscious production plausible while avoiding the hard work of actually transforming the industry for the better, is sadly common.

However, the technology now exists to provide a clear alternative to wasteful, traditional production mechanisms, without sacrificing quality, creativity, fabric versatility, or speed of production. Kornit Digital is committed to making sustainability more than mere marketing chatter—more than some pie-in-the-sky ideal—and giving brands, fulfillers, and designers worldwide the tools they need to create in a manner that satisfies both the conscience and the buying public.

That is why we’ve applied a standardized scientific methodology to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of two of our key systems for digital textile production on demand, Kornit Atlas MAX and Kornit Presto. Supporting our commitment to eliminate water and other materials waste from a traditionally wasteful business, we can quantify the following sustainability benefits of implementing these technologies as an alternative to screen printing:

• The Atlas MAX for industrial-scale, on-demand digital direct-to-garment production uses up to 93% less water and 66% less energy, while producing up to 82% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
• The Kornit Presto for single-step, roll-to-roll digital direct-to-fabric production in any yardage uses up to 95% less water and 94% less energy, while producing up to 83% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Contact us today to learn more about Kornit’s efforts to make fashion and textile production a cleaner enterprise globally, and how you can address the sustainability imperative in your own operations while creating new business opportunities, new efficiencies across your organization, new product applications, and ever-greater profit margins.