New Linen Manufacturing Plant Practices Water Recycling & Sustainable Production

Bed linen manufacturer Thomaston Mills recently announced the completion of upgrades to its latest acquisition, a dyeing and finishing plant located in Easley, S.C. The 115-year old American company puts sustainable manufacturing and responsible material sourcing at the heart of its corporate values, and is outspoken against environmentally irresponsible industry practices.

While known for its “100% Combed American Cotton" products and American Boutique brand, the company intends to develop more biodegradable and sustainable linen lines in the coming years, with the intention of serving boutique hotels whose customers increasingly request they “go green."

“We are working to raise consciousness of harmful practices that are common in our industry, such as the dumping of dyes and bleaches into waterways and the adverse affects of microfiber fabrics," says Tim Voit, chief marketing officer at Thomaston Mills. “We finish our fabrics here in the USA to high standards including the proper disposal of wastewater."

Many other hotel linen distributors, he explains, dye and finish their fabrics in countries with minimal, irresponsible environmental controls. Practices like dumping chemical byproducts into waterways allow international factories to cut production costs, but at the expense of the environment.

Thomaston Mills overhauled an existing finishing plant to bring it up to the company's sustainable production standards. One of its main pre-existing features was its water recycling system—the company aims to avoid contaminating its wastewater with harmful bleaches and dyes, and instead recycle it into nitrogen-rich water that can be used as fertilizing water by regional farmers.

Even before consumers began to seek out environmentally responsible products, the company was already committed to implementing environmentally sound practices in its production.

“Our finishing here in the U.S. is done under strict wastewater disposal standards and we are proud of our U.S. workforce, many of whom have decades of linen experience," says Voit.

The investment into an additional dyeing and finishing plant also supports Thomaston Mills' other key sustainability tenet, which is to eschew microfiber fabrics and use cotton blends in its product portfolio.

Microfiber linens are commonly used by most commercial linen distributors because the material is durable and inexpensive. However, it is also non-biodegradable—a microfiber sheet will shed plastic particles into the wastewater system every single time it's washed, says the company. For a typical hotel sheet, this is over 100 times a year. The Thomaston dyeing and finishing plant will turn out linens that are competitively durable, having gone through spectrophotometer shade control and sanforization to reduce shrinkage.

Though microfiber linens keep costs down for many hotel chains, Thomaston Mills believes that consumers' increasing knowledge of environmentally responsible products will drive more hotels to invest in a higher-quality product with sustainable methods of production and a positive impact on the surrounding community.

“From our vantage point, hotels that use microfiber are risking reputational damage as more attention [to the environment] is paid by their guests," says Voit.

The company is expanding beyond its hotel clientele to sell products directly to the consumers. In April, it launched a new brand imprint and website, American Blossom Linens, offering organic cotton, undyed sheet sets made in the USA.

From a wastewater recycling program that benefits regional Southern farmers to organic material sourcing, this venerable American brand is committed to producing its products in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way.