China’s Advance Denim is advancing its sustainability efforts thanks to a new partnership with Good Earth Cotton.
The 35-year-old Shunde-based mill, China’s oldest denim weaver, will begin to use Good Earth Cotton at its Advance Sico denim factory in Nha Trang, Vietnam and release the new fabric in December 2022.
The Good Earth Cotton program combines smart farming with primary impact data and technology to deliver transparent annually audited reports via FibreTrace technology. FibreTrace enables consumers to track a garment’s entire lifecycle by embedding traceable, scannable and indestructible pigments directly into the fabric. It has been adopted by such brands as 7 for All Mankind and Reformation.
In addition, Good Earth Cotton’s outlined regenerative growing techniques maintain soil health and benefit the environment because the cotton retains more carbon than it emits during its growth.
“Advance Denim is proud to announce that we will be adding another layer of sustainability to our Advance Sico mill in Nah Trang, Vietnam by partnering with Good Earth Cotton, bringing denim made with modern regenerative cotton to the Vietnam region,” said Advance Denim’s U.S. marketing director, Mark Ix. “Advance Sico and Good Earth Cotton share a commitment to sustainability and carbon reduction, and are motivated to deliver high quality, sustainable and fully traceable products.”
Advance aims to use 90 percent environmentally conscious fibers in its product line by 2023. Its other sustainable initiatives include BigBox Dyeing, an indigo dye process introduced in 2019 that reduces water consumption in the dye process by up to 85 percent, eliminates wastewater completely and decreases energy consumption by 25 percent; and BioBlue Indigo, launched in 2021, that creates cleaner indigo dye by using 95 percent less water than traditional methods as well as the elimination of added toxic sodium hydrosulfite in the dye process.
Advance is also in the process of increasing productive capacity at the busy Sico site, which opened in 2020, and will raise it 25 percent by year’s end.