Bella-Dura Contract Fabric Touts Its Green Credentials

Bella-Dura’s solution-dyed fibers are mildew resistant, cleanable, durable, inert, and fade resistant, making them suitable for indoor or outdoor applications.

Introduced in 2005, Bella-Dura, an indoor and outdoor polypropylene fabric developed by Wearbest Sil-Tex Mills and American Fibers and Yarn, has been gaining popularity in the synthetic fabric market. Whether or not it lives up to the companies’ description of it as “the environmental champion of all synthetic fibers,” Bella-Dura does offer real performance benefits.

Polypropylene (part of the broader polyolefin family of polymers) used to be thought of as a “cheap” fabric. Not only inexpensive, it had a plastic-like feel and was difficult to dye, flammable, susceptible to damage from ultraviolet light, and lacking in resilience. But polypropylene also offered performance advantages not found in most synthetic fibers—it is tough, stain and chemical resistant, inert, lightweight, and uses less energy and water to manufacture than nylon or polyester.

American Fibers and Yarn, producers of the fiber, and Wearbest Sil-Tex Mills, weavers of the Bella-Dura fabric, have built a product that takes advantage of polypropylene’s strengths while mitigating its weaknesses, starting with the Bella-Dura dyeing process. Most fabrics are dyed only on the outer portion of the fiber, using a method that wastes water and energy and makes the dyes vulnerable to wear. But Bella-Dura is “solution dyed,” with colorants added before the fiber is extruded. The dye becomes part of the fiber and cannot be washed away. The resulting colors can withstand cleaning with bleach and resist fading, giving Bella-Dura an AATCC-16 lightfastness rating (which measures a fabric’s resistance to color fading) of over 1,500 hours, far surpassing the Association for Contract Textiles (ACT) Performance Guideline rating of 40 hours for indoor upholstery and 400 for outdoor.

Like the company’s dyes, Bella-Dura incorporates other properties directly into the fabric, as well. Biocides are added to provide protection against mildew (though the fiber possesses some natural resistance), and a low-toxicity flame retardant gives the drapery fabric an NFPA 701 Class 1 fire rating. These additives improve the lifespan of the fabric and will not wear or wash off, making potentially toxic coatings and treatments unnecessary. Bella-Dura does come standard with the fluorocarbon-based Greenshield technology, however, which raises health and environmental concerns (see EBN Vol. 17, No. 7), but a non-fluorocarbon product is also available.

The Bella-Dura fiber is stronger than conventional polyolefin, according to Linda Long, marketing director for Bella-Dura, “but much of the fabric’s durability is in the weave construction.” Bella-Dura can withstand 50,000 double rubs, as tested by ASTM D1475, more than the industry standard of 30,000 double rubs for contract fabrics. The company pays close attention to durability, says Long, “but our real goal is to provide a material to the design community that is highly durable, beautiful, and soft as well as functional.” Bella-Dura backs up its durability claims with a five-year residential warranty and a two-year commercial warranty.

Sina Pearson, president of Sina Pearson Textiles and one of the founders of the Association for Contract Textiles, sells Bella-Dura as part of her company’s collection. Though the environmental characteristics of the fabric are important to her clients, “performance is a really big deal in corporate interiors,” she says. Pearson likes Bella-Dura’s combination of durability, cleanability, and lightfastness. And though her company works with corporate interiors and does not usually work with outdoor applications, she points out that “it’s great for atriums or buildings that incorporate a lot of glass, and it is affordable.” Her company’s Cancun and Cozumel collections sell for $37 a yard, which is significantly less than recycled-polyester fibers. But what sold Pearson on Bella-Dura is that “it has a very fabric-like feel.” She remarked, “A lot of synthetic fibers have a synthetic feel.”

The cost, performance, and green attributes of Bella-Dura have generated positive feedback and expanded the company’s business to more than 25 distributors nationwide. The company even started a recycling program to turn offcuts into car parts and other goods. But the product’s positive attributes are tempered by marketing claims on its website that are difficult to confirm, such as “Bella-Dura salvages and reuses a byproduct that would otherwise be incinerated.” The company does not make it clear whether these raw materials are specific to Bella-Dura and its manufacturing or are simply a common method of making polypropylene.

Bella-Dura does not discuss source materials, technology, or additives, leaving most environmental claims unverifiable. And the company does not provide any data to support its claims. Instead, the company points to Bella-Dura’s Cradle-to-Cradle Silver certification, which assesses products using a holistic approach but does not disclose its stance on many chemicals and processes, so its environmental implications cannot be independently verified (see EBN Vol. 16, No. 2). Bella-Dura may want to protect its technology, but greater transparency could strengthen the company’s environmental claims.

– Brent Ehrlich

For more information:

Bella-Dura
Garfield, New Jersey
800-544-0478
www.bella-dura.com

November 1, 2008

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