Making a Splash: Celebrating World Water Day With Digital Textile Printing

Every year, the world takes a moment to focus on one of our most important resources: water. Known as the sign of life, water is essential to every process we can think of and preserving it is crucial in the fight for our planet. For this year’s World Water Day, a special website was created by UN-Water, the organization responsible for coordinating the efforts of UN and global entities related to water and sanitation issues. In addition, different events take place all around the world, in the Philippines, India, Denmark, and other countries. 

Here at Kornit, water preservation has been an important goal for many years, driving us to develop our signature waterless technology solutions. Let’s dive into the issue of water and fashion to learn more about its importance and what we can all do to contribute. 
The fashion industry is in hot water
While the fashion industry has a lot of positive influence to be proud of, it is unfortunately also known as one of the most polluting industries in the world. First, there is the issue of water consumption for fashion purposes. Cotton production, for instance, consumes large amounts of water that caused a severe water crisis in India. The manufacturing process of a single pair of jeans consumes approximately 1,800 gallons of water, a thought that in the age of fast fashion is incredibly alarming. 

Another problem has to do with the water pollution caused by textile treatment and dyeing procedures, which accounts for 20% of industrial water pollution. Materials and chemicals that are often used in the analog dyeing and printing process damage the environment and destroy water sources that many living creatures rely on.  
Diving into the issue 
The above problems have been bothering the digital printing professionals at Kornit for a long time and gave us the drive and passion to develop solutions that form an environmentally friendly alternative. The result is a water-free printing process that relies on nontoxic chemistry and complies with the highest environmental standards. 
We form printing procedures that do not pollute water or waste them by using sustainable ink sets that can be used to print on multiple fabric types without the need to clean between materials. Our single-step process doesn’t require additional fixation or pretreatment chemicals, and also uses 60% less energy, which may be less water-focused but is just as important to our planet. 
You can learn more about Kornit’s waterless digital textile printing by watching a short video we’ve recently created about the topic. This World Water Day, we invite you to join us in making the world a better and wetter place, one print at a time. 

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