Fiber Guide: Rayon

Guide

Fiber Guide: Rayon

October 13, 2021

As part of the CFDA’s extensive Sustainability Initiatives Resource Hub launched in January 2019, the CFDA operated an A-Z directory called the Materials Index. The Index was designed as an informational tool, focused on fiber knowledge.

The Materials Index listings migrated in to the CFDA.com Materials Hub and split traditional fibers from new-age innovative fibers/materials.

This series of resource guides are dedicated to ensuring designers have extensive knowledge on traditional fibers.

RAYON (Viscose)

Overview

Rayon is a manufactured regenerated cellulosic fiber derived from wood pulp. Rayon is typically made of wood from eucalyptus, spruce, and pine trees, but can also be made from cotton or bamboo.

Typical rayon produced in the US is called rayon or viscose rayon. Some imported rayon is labeled as viscose. Rayon made using the cuprammonium process can be labeled cupra, cupro, or cupra rayon under the trade name Bemberg.

Rayon was the first manufactured fiber, developed in the late 19^th century and commercially produced in the US starting in 1910. It was originally marketed as artificial silk due to its softness, nice drape, and luster. It quickly rose in popularity because its price point was significantly lower than silk and cotton.

According to the European Man-Made Fibres Association (CIRFS), in 2016 manufactured cellulosic made up 6.6% of the global market, roughly 5.3 million metric tons. The Textile Exchange estimated that viscose made up 91% of cellulosic production, only 29% of which was sourced sustainably. (Followed by lyocell at 6% and modal at 3%.)

Rayon can have significant negative impacts on people, the environment, and biodiversity along its lifecycle. The wood pulp used to make rayon can be sustainably harvested, but often it isn’t. According to Canopy Planet, roughly a third come from ancient and endangered forests.

There are multiple ways to produce rayon. The most common is the viscose process, which uses toxic chemicals to break down the wood pulp and turn it into a fiber. These chemicals are dangerous for workers. and often aren’t recovered or recycled by production facilities, winding up in our air and waterways.

Rayon fabrics like Bamboo and Cupro (made from a bi-product of the cotton plant, cotton linters) are often incorrectly marketed as sustainable because the raw material is sustainably harvested (bamboo grows quickly without chemicals and a lot of water, and cotton linters are often called “waste” from cotton production despite having their own market). The production of fabric from these materials can be done in a more sustainable manner, but usually it still goes through the chemical-intensive and polluting viscose process- so be wary and really vet your sources. (Cuprammonium rayon is no longer made in the US because its producers could not meet air- and water-quality requirements.) See Bamboo.

Sustainability Considerations

Rayon production contributes to the deforestation of ancient and endangered forests

The logging of these forests can have a negative impact on entire ecosystems. It can threaten endangered and protected species often found in these forests.
Deforestation is destroying people’s livelihoods. Indigenous people and local communities are deprived of access to traditional land uses, with a diverse range of impacts from food security to communities’ safety, conflicts or cultural disruptions. According to the World Bank, 25% of the global population — 1.6 billion people — depends on forests for their survival and livelihood.
Chemicals used for pest control, fertilization, and waste/emissions from preparing logs, debarking and transport can degrade soil and water quality.

According to CanopyPlanet :

More than 150 million trees are logged every year and turned into cellulosic fabric – if placed end to end those trees would circle the earth 7 times
Between 2013 and 2020, it is expected that the number of trees being logged every year and turned into fabric such as viscose will have doubled.
Dissolving-pulp (the base material for rayon/viscose) wastes approximately 70% of the tree and is a chemically intensive manufacturing process¹
Less than 20 percent of the world’s ancient forests remain in intact tracts large enough to maintain biological diversity.
Forests in Indonesia, Canada’s Boreal and temperate rainforests and the Amazon are being logged for next season’s fashion and apparel.

Chemically intensive & polluting to air and water

Pulp production and the breaking down of pulp to turn it into a fiber often requires large quantities of acid and toxic chemicals that pollute air and water. Clothing made from rayon often uses large quantities of water, toxic dyes, and finishing chemicals.
Air emissions can include sulfur, nitrous oxides, carbon disulfide, and hydrogen sulfide. Chlorine compounds used during the bleaching process may be released to the atmosphere and VOCs are emitted to the atmosphere from wood chips stored outdoors.
Water emissions can include nitrates, phosphates, iron, zinc, oil, grease, and is often low in dissolved oxygen which endangers aquatic life. Effluent from the bleach plant, where bleaching chemicals containing chlorine are used, contains AOX and chlorate, which have toxic effects in the aquatic environment. Chlorine bleaching may also result in dioxins emissions, which are classified as persistent organic pollutants, highly toxic to humans and the environment.
Even if the process is “carbon neutral” (trees growing cycle absorbs as much CO2 as is lost when cut down), air and water pollution is still an issue.

High water use

The production of rayon uses and wastes copious amounts of water.

High energy consumption

Fiber production is an energy intensive process. Energy from non-renewable sources contributes to CO2 emissions and climate change.

Not yet closed-loop or circular

Currently, rayon is rarely recycled.

Doesn’t always biodegrade

While rayon is biodegradable, it doesn’t biodegrade in current landfills. It can biodegrade in the ground, but this would also release any toxins from rayon fiber production, fabric production, dyeing, processing, and washing into the ground and is not recommended.

High-impact cleaning and customer care

Rayon becomes delicate when wet and often requires dry cleaning. Dry cleaning often uses solvents that can have detrimental impact on the environment.

Rayon production is dangerous for workers

Workers can be seriously harmed by the chemicals used to make most rayon. Carbon disulfide in particular can cause reproductive harm and damage to the nervous system (carbon-disulfide-based viscose is no longer made within the U.S.). Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, can cause corrosion and chemical burns to workers who handle it frequently and without protection.
Also, work accidents can occur from explosions or leakages in chemical storage areas.
According to Paul D. Blanc, who teaches occupational and environmental medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and wrote Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon, throughout most of the 20th century, viscose rayon manufacturing was inextricably linked to widespread, severe and often lethal illness among those employed in making it. For workers in viscose rayon factories, poisoning caused insanity, nerve damage, Parkinson’s disease, and increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

Lack of Transparency

It is often impossible to know where raw plant material used to make rayon comes from or to measure the impact of harvesting it.

More Sustainable Options

If you are looking for more sustainable rayon, it is important to look for sustainably forested, low-chemical, closed-loop producers with certifications like FSC, EU Ecolabel, and OekoTex 100.

Better alternatives to conventional rayon include:

How It’s Made

The Water Footprint Network has written a complete and thorough description of the production of viscose fibers and related sustainability issues in the 2017 report “Viscose fibres production: An assessment of sustainability issues.”

Available Standards & Certifications

Forest Stewardship Council | FSC is a global, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of responsible forest management worldwide. FSC certification ensures that products come from responsibly managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefits. The FSC Principles and Criteria provide a foundation for all forest management standards globally, including the FSC US National Standard (v1.0) that guides forest management certification in the U.S. FSC has developed a set of 10 principles and 57 Criteria that apply to FSC-certified forests around the world. The 10 principles are:

The Organization shall comply with all applicable laws, regulations and nationally-ratified international treaties, conventions and agreements.
The Organization shall maintain or enhance the social and economic wellbeing of workers.
The Organization shall identify and uphold Indigenous Peoples’ legal and customary rights of ownership, use and management of land, territories and resources affected by management activities.
The Organization shall contribute to maintaining or enhancing the social and economic wellbeing of local communities.
The Organization shall efficiently manage the range of multiple products and services of the Management Unit to maintain or enhance long term economic viability and the range of environmental and social benefits.
The Organization shall maintain, conserve and/or restore ecosystem services and environmental values of the Management Unit, and shall avoid, repair or mitigate negative environmental impacts.
The Organization shall have a management plan consistent with its policies and objectives and proportionate to scale, intensity and risks of its management activities. The management plan shall be implemented and kept up to date based on monitoring information in order to promote adaptive management. The associated planning and procedural documentation shall be sufficient to guide staff, inform affected stakeholders and interested stakeholders and to justify management decisions.
The Organization shall demonstrate that, progress towards achieving the management objectives, the impacts of management activities and the condition of the Management Unit, are monitored and evaluated proportionate to the scale, intensity and risk of management activities, in order to implement adaptive management. The Organization shall maintain and/or enhance the High Conservation Values in the Management Unit through applying the precautionary approach.
Management activities conducted by or for The Organization for the Management Unit shall be selected and implemented consistent with The Organization’s economic, environmental and social policies and objectives and in compliance with the Principles and Criteria collectively.

Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) | PEFC is an international non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting Sustainable Forest Management through independent third-party certification. It is an umbrella organization. National certification systems that have developed standards in line with PEFC requirements can apply for endorsement to gain access to global recognition and market access through PEFC International. PEFC is currently the world’s largest forest certification system with more than 300 million hectares of certified forests. PEFC has standards for Sustainable Forest Management which cover all types of forests, group forest management certification schemes and chain of custody certification which is a mechanism for tracking certified material from the forest to the final product to ensure that the wood, wood fiber or non-wood forest produce contained in the product or product line can be traced back to certified forests. While PEFC is preferred by fiber producers, it is less respected than FSC certification by non-profits.

CanopyStyle Verification Audit | The CanopyStyle Audits are the first, third-party audits

of global viscose and rayon producers to assess the risk of whether they source from endangered forests and/or from socially controversial fiber. Conducted by The Rainforest Alliance, the CanopyStyle Audits were developed by Canopy and approved by the CanopyStyle Leaders for Forest Conservation. Audit findings help both fashion brands and viscose producers see the current level of risk of their materials originating from ancient and endangered forests, be it Indonesia’s high-carbon peatland rainforests, the Amazon, or Canada’s Boreal forests. This comprehensive verification process is a major step toward transforming the environ- mental footprint of the rayon-viscose supply chain.

EU Ecolabel | EU Ecolabel is a voluntary scheme for product certification including cellulose fibers (standard viscose, modal and lyocell) managed by the European Commission. Only products with a market in the European Economic Area can be certified (even if produced elsewhere in the world).

The EU Ecolabel criteria for textile products aim to promote textile products which are:

Sourced from more sustainable forms of agriculture and forestry;
Manufactured using resources and energy more efficiently;
Manufactured using cleaner, less polluting processes;
Manufactured using less hazardous substances and
Designed and specified to be of high quality and durable.

The EU Ecolabel includes all stages of viscose production and focuses on the aspects with the highest environmental impact at each stage of production. For cellulosic fibres, the criteria set minimum content levels of sustainable/legal wood (25% of FSC, PEFC or equivalent certification); maximum loads of the most relevant pollutants for emissions to air and water per unit of product in the industrial phases; does not allow the application of elemental chlorine in bleaching; and requires that a minimum of 50 % of the pulp used to manufacture fibres is purchased from dissolving pulp mills that recover value from their spent process liquors either by generating on-site electricity and steam or manufacturing chemical co-products.

Corporate social responsibility – according to International Labour Organisation (ILO) Core Labour Standards – is only required for cut/make/trim production sites.

Higg Materials sustainability Index (msi) | The Higg MSI is a scoring system for materials production based on Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) analysis and data inputs from producers who voluntarily provide data complemented, when possible, with available data from research. It is an initiative of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). For viscose all phases of raw materials production are included. The data available is from Lenzing; Aditya Birla has also provided data which are currently being assessed for data quality. Users of the tool not only have access to the scoring; they also may access metadata.

The tool provides benchmarks for each type of material/fiber. The benchmark relates to how a given material compares to other materials. Currently, SAC members and other organizations with full access to the MSI can access LCIA results, or midpoints, for all production process. SAC has plans in place for such information to be publically available to any user. Scoring results can be communicated outside an organization under specific Terms of Use.

USDA Cerified BioPreferred® Products | As consumers consider purchasing options with sustainable attributes, USDA wants to make it easy for consumers to identify biobased products. The USDA Certified Biobased Product label, displayed on a product certified by USDA, is designed to provide useful information to consumers about the biobased content of the product. A business with a biobased product that meets USDA criteria may apply for certification, allowing them to display the USDA Certified Biobased Product label on the product. This label assures a consumer that the product contains a verified amount of renewable biological ingredients (referred to as biobased content). Consumers can trust the label to mean what it says because manufacturer’s claims concerning the biobased content are third-party certified and strictly monitored by USDA.

OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100 | A worldwide consistent, independent testing and certification system for raw, semi-finished, and finished textile products at all processing levels, as well as accessory materials used. The tests for harmful substances cover:

legally banned and controlled substances
chemicals known to be harmful to the health (but not yet legally controlled)
parameters for health protection

Taken in their entirety, the requirements go far beyond existing national legislation.

Organizations & Working Groups

Canopy Planet’s CanopyStyle Prgram | Canopy is a non-profit environmental organization focused on the protection of the world’s endangered forests with a specific focus on the pulp industry for viscose and paper production. Since 2012, Canopy has been working closely with viscose producers, designers and brands to ensure sustainable wood sourcing for viscose production under the CanopyStyle campaign. As of August 2018:

160 brands and designers had committed to eliminate endangered forests from their fabrics.
12 viscose producers have implemented endangered forest sourcing policies (representing 80% of the global market)

A large part of Canopy’s work involves supporting brands to make the most informed and sustainable sourcing decisions possible. To that end they developed the four tools:

The Hot Button Issue Report: In this report, Canopy ranks producers across 24 sustainability criteria using color coding — ‘green shirts’ indicate top performers and those with the most room to improve are indicated by ‘red shirt’ rankings. It is used as a tool to motivate viscose producers to assess and improve their performance.
The CanopyStyle Audit: Read about it in Standards and Certifications above.
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of Man-made Cellulosic Fibers: Commissioned by Stella McCartney and conducted by LCA specialists SCS Global, this study assessed ten different global sourcing scenarios — including eucalyptus plantations, bamboo, cotton-linters, flax fiber and recycled clothing. It evaluated these scenarios across a broad range of environmental impacts, including those related to terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, global climate, chemical use, species stress and human health. In a sign of the heightened market interest in these innovative new fibers, a technical webinar to further contextualize the study’s findings was attended by approximately 100 brands.
The CanopyStyle Guide: A book providing clarity and information on implementation requirements for brands, textile producers, and fiber manufacturers that have adopted CanopyStyle policies. Detailed within it is an environmental hierarchy of fibres, reinforcing procurement decisions consistent with the Life Cycle Analysis.

Fiber Guide: Rayon

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