Textiles are a huge industry, and an even larger polluter, says Patty Grossman, CEO of O Ecotextiles. But it wasn’t until Grossman and her sister—O Ecotextile’s US General Manager Leigh Anne Van Dusen—started searching for an ecofriendly alternative, that they discovered that one didn’t exist. MGB spoke to Grossman about how she and Van Dusen founded a company to make ecofriendly furnishings fabrics.
How and when did O Ecotextiles begin, and what was the incentive for this company?
It was Leigh Ann’s idea. About five years ago, Leigh Anne was looking for a fabric to recover her sofa and her kids were telling her to look for something environmentally friendly. She thought that was a good idea, but there was nothing available except for a little bit of recycled polyester. And she didn’t want polyester. We looked into it and were shocked at how polluting the textile industry was. The company is technically only about 18 months old because it took Leigh Anne and I that long to find manufacturing partners and take the “toxic yuck” out of each step of the manufacturing process. It was not easy.
How environmentally unfriendly is the traditional textile industry?
The textile industry is the number one industrial polluter of water in the world. The toxic yuck that gets flushed out into our water table, and therefore spread all around the world, is really quite alarming. And sometimes chemicals don’t have a terrible toxicity level, but if they’re flushed out into the ecosystem, it changes the local ecosystem just enough so it kills the animal and plant life. You have to make sure that you buy from a producer that has water treatment at each step of the production process, and we do.
O Ecotextile’s slogan is “indulgent yet responsible.” How is the product both?
Textiles are a glorious human invention. Life is short—I want the fabrics in my life to be soft and durable if they’re upholstery, and if they’re drapery, to be lustrous and drape-able and UV resistant and gorgeous. We tried to take the toxic yuck out of the production process and still come up with high-design, high-performance fabrics. That was hard because those toxins do a really good job. In softening, the two most popular softeners are silicones and benzalkonium chloride. We don’t use [those]; we use aloe vera, beeswax, and vitamin E. Also, the really laboring thing about weaving fabrics is warping the loom. The nasty chemicals used in weaving are sizers and desizers. We don’t use anything, or we use potato starch, so we have to weave more slowly.
You have an extensive background in microfinancing. But where is your background in textiles?
Nowhere. Leigh Anne doesn’t have a background in it either. The only reason this became possible is because we looked for manufacturing partners who were interested in greening each step of the production process. We had to look worldwide. We looked in the US but nobody was interested, unfortunately. We found fabulous producers in other countries, like our partner in Japan is a man named Keishi Ikeuchi. He has a company called Ikeuchi Towels. When we found him he was so excited he said, “I’ve been looking for you guys. Where have you been?”
Your company prides itself on not only producing green products but utilizing a green process. What can you do to be green?
Right now we are so far and away the greenest producer. We need to educate people about why they need to buy our products and/or the products of other producers who are producing fabrics that are safe to bring into your home and office. People don’t realize that [like] the phthalates and Bisphenol A and toxic chemicals that have just been outlawed in California in kid’s toys—well, the vast majority of textile printing dyes are full of that stuff. Phthalates is a class of chemicals that has a pretty unsavory toxicity. People who are very careful about not bringing toxic toys into their house are often putting kids to sleep in rooms full of this stuff because the fabrics are full of it.
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