Redesigning the future of the textile industry is an ambitious yet attainable vision. Many companies already, especially in the sportswear and outdoor sector, the most sustainability-oriented ones, have accepted the challenge of a new industrial model capable of producing sustainable garments without having to give up technical performance.

Cifra, the business-to-business company producing in Italy, with the exclusive tailored knitwear based on the patented Warp-Knit-Seamless technique, is now accelerating environmental best practices for advanced and sustainable sportswear. Ethical, functional, with an innovative and fully customized design, it is the result of relentless research and experimentation as well as of a virtuous and traceable supply chain, certified for both the process and the product. Unique garments capable of shaping the body but also designed for either the most extreme sports and a more contemporary upper casual.

Each single process is certified in the entire value chain as well as the yarns used, the most pre- and post-consumer technological ones at the very heart of a new and environmentally aware circular textile industry. This is where Cifra has been seriously committing for many years, long before this issue started fuelling the worldwide marketing and the green washing era commenced.

We are facing a tangible commitment that in five years only has seen CO2 emissions into the atmosphere vertically being reduced from 749 tons in 2017 to just over 30 in 2021with a forecast of a further reduction by the end of 2022, the Milan based company explains.

Furthermore, in July 2022 Cifra started up an innovative 124-kWp photovoltaic system that will avoid further CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and is going to be furtherly implemented over the next three years. This has been made possible by structural interventions and planned investments towards greater efficiency such as full electricity supply from renewable sources.  Absolute integrity is also guaranteed to the production cycle by selecting key partners, from yarns’ to dyeing plants’, in compliance with the most stringent international standards.

Such an approach is certified by the prestigious international award STeP by OEKO-TEX, Sustainable Textile - a standard that certifies issues related to environmental protection, worker health and safety, product ethics and chemical safety. In addition to that, the Zero Waste programme, easily connected with the warp-knit-seamless technology, allows to fully eliminate production waste.

All items made from recycled, raw and dyed yarns are GRS (Global Recycled Standard) certified, the most important international standard for the sustainable production of garments and textile products made from recycled materials.

Cifra has also adhered to both Higg Index, an effective tool for the standardized measurement of value chain sustainability of each company, developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, and finally PEF (Product Environmental Footprint), a methodology, study and evaluation criterion developed and promoted by the European Commission.

The PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) is a method based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) used to measure the environmental performance of goods and/or service throughout its life cycle: the OEF (Organisation Environmental Footprint) uses the same method and approach to measure the environmental performance of an Organisation. Such a tool thus becomes not only a way to quantify and reduce the environmental footprint of products/services but also to communicate their environmental performance to consumers according to a standardised approach based on which a purchasing decision is made by also evaluating the environmental impact of products/services on the market.

Cifra in Portland and Munich

Cifra’s new sustainable concept garments are being previewed at Functional Fabric Fair (October 26-27 in Portland) and Performance Days (November 3-4 in Munich).

wks-cifra.com