ARE YOU AWARE OF YOUR DENIM’S FOOTPRINT?
WITH THE ORTA BLU APP, FIND OUT WHAT IMPACT YOU MAKE WITH YOUR DECISIONS
Continuing its commitment to making real and lasting sustainability impact in the denim industry, ORTA has created the Orta Blu App, a proprietary tool developed to differentiate materials and processes that go into ORTA’s denim production based on environmental impacts from cradle-to-gate approach.
‘Environmental Impact Calculator’ in Orta Blu App calculates the environmental impacts of denim manufactured by ORTA with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology; starting from raw material extraction and following each production stage of denim production—transport of raw materials to ORTA mill, to the spinning, dyeing, sizing, weaving, finishing, quality control and packaging.
The Orta Blu App calculates 5 overall environmental impacts, leading with global warming potential, which impacts climate change. Global warming is at the top of young eco-consumers concerns. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), clothing and footwear production is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The other impacts are around the eliminating substances to water that contribute of oxygen depletion and its water pollution impact; land use and the impact of deforestation; the measure of mineral, metal and fossil fuel resources used to produce a product; and water use, which ORTA has been implementing with its Indigo Flow dyeing process standard with 70% reduced water usage.
With this tool, you can select your denim’s elasticity, weight, composition, shade and finishing, and see its environmental performance compared to standard denim. Each of the 5 environmental impacts has a different unit of measurement. To make the tool easier to use, ORTA presents the data results as scores compared to a standard product. The performance of each ORTA fabric produced is assessed through LCA and the results are compared with the standard denim. Each impact value is normalized to standard denim’s performance and are added together using equal weighting to produce a single score that can be used for quick comparison and easy decision-making.
The calculator is the cumulation of ORTA’s LCA studies for each and every newly developed fabric in its past 4 season collections. Exclusively based on ORTA denim fabric and processes, the tool is the next generation of the Orta Blu sustainability platform with a mission to create a future where denim is designed, produced, consumed and disposed of in radically different ways.
The app also has a denim & sustainability glossary feature; a comprehensive offering of the denim and sustainability terms and their definitions to educate consumers on the processes and environmental measures.
Making ORTA’s production and environmental impact data available to the consumer is an industry game changer, especially today as young consumer’s environmental and social expectations are driving their choices. According to the 2019 McKinsey and Business of Fashion (BoF) “State of Fashion” report, “nine in ten Generation Z consumers believe companies have a responsibility to address environmental and social issues.”
“ORTA is excited with the potential of giving consumers transparent and meaningful measures of their choices in denim, and the opportunity to share with the world the progress we have made in our practices and processes. We plan to add more features to the app as we commit deeper to expanding our sustainability processes with new eco-technology, biological- engineering and creativity. Orta Blu App is one tool that will help us chart our handprint vision towards using less resources while enabling a more abundant and sustainable future.” states Dr. Sedef Uncu Aki, who leads ORTA’s Denim Sales & Marketing, PD, R&D, Planning and Operations.
The Orta Blu app is a free consumer app available on the App Store and Google Play.