Agua Fabrics

Going green – as we all know – is easier said than done, particularly for a business with all its different component parts and logistical challenges. Starting our own sustainability journey required real commitment and investment, but in recent years we’ve made significant progress in reducing our energy consumption and our carbon footprint.

Perhaps the biggest advance we’ve made in improving our environmental standing is creating VerdEco – our first sustainable fabric. It’s crafted entirely from pre-consumer textile waste otherwise destined for landfill, which is then recycled into granules, spun into yarn, and finally re-woven; this is all done using zero water (in fact, upholstering a three-seat sofa in VerdEco saves on average 250 litres of the stuff).

What’s more, because our vegan-friendly fabrics replicate animal products like leather and wool, we bypass often-destructive mass farming practices, and the use of pesticides and fertilisers.

Durability is another key concern of ours. Since the early days of Agua we’ve also worked to make our fabrics as hardwearing as possible, reducing the odds that you’ll have to replace them again and again.

We’ve been supplying contract fabrics since 2003, and many of our earliest collections, like Taurus and Nova have been available ever since. We can’t name names, but the chances are you’ll have sat on Agua Fabrics that are close to 20 years old and still going strong in many hotel or coffee shop chains up and down the UK, who we supplied when our performance upholstery fabrics business was still in its infancy.

One of the biggest challenges we face is getting into the nitty-gritty of our manufacturing process, to reconsider things like the chemicals we utilise – an unavoidable ingredient when making high-performance fabrics for contract settings.

When it came to creating AguaGuard365, our bespoke anti-bacterial treatment that protects upholstered furnishings from a variety of viruses (including Covid-19), we steered away from using harmful heavy metals (a traditional method for fighting bacteria on fabric) and instead employed state-of-the-art silver chloride, which naturally destroy microbes while ensuring complete safety.

It’s also worth noting that the mill we partner with to produce over 95 per cent of our soft fabric collections is moving towards using halogen-free fire retardants, and has an environmental STeP accreditation through OEKO-TEX in the works, (we’ll share more on this soon).

All of our fabrics are also phthalate free, and compliant with REACH chemical safety regulations.

You might now be wondering what we’re planning next to boost our green credentials. We’ve already mentioned that our VerdEco collection is the blueprint for other sustainable fabrics currently in development. Beyond this our long-term aspiration is to develop as many sustainable high-performance fabrics as we can, and to continue to create performance fabrics in the best possible way, using clean chemicals and state-of-the-art technology.

There are huge challenges around developing appropriately durable faux leathers for contract use, but we’re investing in research and development nonetheless. Currently, we’re exploring the feasibility of producing appropriate tough plant-based vinyls, and how to do this in the most sustainable way.

We’ll also be updating our fleet of company cars so that half of them are electric, and the other half are hybrid. On top of this, we have just attained Planet Mark Accreditation: a rigorous certification process that benchmarks a company’s CO2 footprint and encourages certified businesses to build on these achievements.

We’re committing to reducing our carbon footprint year-on-year. No enterprise can claim to be a sustainable one overnight, but we’re committed to meaningful, ongoing change. This, for Agua, is just the beginning.