Texon today announced that it is on a mission to become a zero-waste organisation by 2025, reinforcing its long-standing commitment to the development of sustainable footwear components, materials for consumer accessories and performance fabrics.

Texon’s products include non-woven saturated felts, extruded filmic materials, wet-web saturated cellulose paperboard, technical fabrics and consumables. They are used in footwear and consumer applications, such as fashion accessories, clothing, luggage, labels, tags and many home and office accessories.

Marking the start of a new decade, Texon has set out its sustainability ambitions for the next five years, which include:

• Reducing its carbon footprint by 50%
• Cutting the use of virgin materials by 50%
• Ensuring 90% of waste is recyclable or reusable
• Reducing water usage and water waste by 20%.
• Demonstrating its dedication to sustainability, Texon is wrapping its environmental efforts under the umbrella of ‘zerofootprint’ - a banner that will tell the story of its ambitions and its achievements.

Jelle Tolsma, Texon CEO, comments: “We’ve been helping our customers to keep the world moving for more than 70 years. Every day, millions of people step out to play, train, compete and explore wearing garments and footwear based on our materials. Sustainability has always driven how we think, what we produce, and who we work with. It is in our DNA.”

“Today is no different. At the start of a new decade, we’re renewing our commitment to sustainability and pledging to do more in collaboration with our customers and supply base. As a business we’ve identified a series of sustainability goals that will further accelerate our journey to becoming a world class sustainable company and drive us closer towards our ambition of zero waste.”

“As always, our aim is to keep our standards high and our impact low for our planet, our communities and our future. We’ll do this by embedding the five Rs of sustainability into everything we do: Rethink, Reduce, Re-use, Recycle and Recover. There are already lots of great examples of the five Rs across our business.”

“When it comes to raw materials, we’re reducing our use of virgin cellulose - pioneering new solutions that allow us to take less from the planet and optimise what we already have. In terms of water consumption, we’re going above and beyond to limit what we use. Where we do use water, we make sure we recycle and return it back to nature even cleaner than when it came out so it can be reused.”

“And, when it comes to transport, we’re continually looking for ways to reduce our CO2 emissions - whether that’s placing our factories near to customers or rethinking how our products are shipped, choosing ocean freight over air freight. Zerofootprint will serve as a constant reminder to us, and to our customers, that there is always more that companies can do - collectively and individually.”

Texon’s sustainability efforts

• Texon creates innovative and sustainable structural products that can help customers maximize production efficiencies and throughput, while minimizing cost and waste = 80% of the polyester fibre Texon uses comes from recycled sources

• Sustainability is built into every aspect of Texon’s product design and development processes = the result is products with a strong sustainability element including Texon Halo, a zero-waste heel counter material; and Texon Reform - the world’s first 100% recyclable closed loop heel counter

• Texon recycles post-production waste and offers recycling programs to its customers for a number of key products = Texon Reform, Texon 87 Series, Texon Rite and Texon XO

• All Texon production facilities are compliant with business and environmental management systems and accreditations = Texon’s Skelton, UK site has reduced CO2 emissions by 26% since 2015

• Texon practices LEAN management principles to reduce its process waste and increase production output, improve working conditions, save energy, and filter and re-use wastewater = 100% of all wastewater at Texon’s Dongguan factory in China is treated and re-used.

Texon’s sustainability ambitions are on show at at Lineapelle, which runs from 19-21 February 2020 in Milan, Italy.

www.texon.com