Kvadrat´s water reduction initiatives

Fresh water is a scarce commodity in many places around the world. At Kvadrat, we strive to preserve water as best we can and continue to implement measures to reduce our water consumption.

To minimise our impact on water resources, we focus on machinery, process, and design innovations. For instance, by using a new heat exchanger at our production partner Wooltex, we were able to decrease water consumption by an additional 13% in 2022 compared to the previous year. A selection of our products is already dry processed, avoiding water use at a key stage of production. An excellent example of our water-saving initiatives is seen in our textiles, Mizmaze and Arda. By applying a soaking-only finish instead of washing, we can reduce water consumption by 80-95% compared to traditional methods. Another example is Waterborn, an upholstery textile made without solvents in an innovative production process, which recycles water. This generates 35% less CO2 and uses 70% less water than typical methods.

In 2022, we built upon our water performance measurements from the previous year. Our total water withdrawal amounted to 98,232 m3, of which 25,782 m3 was consumed. We measure our water efficiency in entities that perform wet processing, and between 2021 and 2022, our water consumption per ton of wet-processed material increased from 33 to 38 cubic meters. This indicates a 16% decrease in our water efficiency. However, we did achieve a positive result with a 60% water recycling ratio in 2022, which will contribute to improving our water efficiency. Our target is to reduce our water usage per textile ton wet-processed by 25% by 2025, based on our 2021 baseline. This means our goal is to reduce our water usage to 25 m3 water pr. textile ton wet-processed.

The decline in our water efficiency can be explained by a reduction in the volume of textiles undergoing wet processing, resulting in lower economies of scale. Our production partner Wooltex has relocated one of its three wet processes to a new spinner facility, and as a result, the meters associated with the steaming process were not included in our 2022 measurements.

We continue our efforts to achieve our water reduction target. For instance, our production partner Innvik is currently finalising the construction of a new dye house, which is projected to reduce water consumption by 20% through water recycling in the dyeing process.