Silicone coated webbing or PVC one?

For a fashion bag or a dog leash, there are several kind of webbing for choosing. For example, nylon webbing, polyester webbing and leather strap, which are the traditional material webbing. With the developed demand of adapting outdoor life, fashion, health and environmental protection, more new materials are used for making webbing straps. So we have PVC webbing, TPU webbing and silicone coated webbing now.

PVC is one kind of the earliest plastic material that people chose to use in daily life. So PVC coated webbing owns larger volume in the market. However, one important point that we have emphasized many times is the poisonousness of PVC. PVC material doesn’t own toxic substance actually, but elasticizer will be added when PVC material is processed. Because PVC is a kind of hard plastic material, which can’t meet various uses. Therefore, PVC material is processed into modified plastics with different hardness such as Pa 30P and Shore 60A. Elasticizer is poisonous, which leads to most types of PVC material become poisonous too. One obvious phenomenon is that PVC coated webbing is easy to release oily secretion. So today PVC coated webbing is the mainstream product to solve problem of water resistance though, it will be sifted out one day.

To replace poisonous PVC, scientists invented TPU. TPU is a kind of elastic plastic material, which itself owns ductility. So TPU can be used for making many products that modified PVC can do. TPU is stink-proof and eco-friendly, which can degrade in water without releasing any toxic substance. It does no harm to both people’s health and environment. Now, TPU is widely used in medical field such as medical catheter. However, TPU material is not only owns higher price, but also not easy to process with science and technology today. It leads to higher process cost. That’s the reason why TPU coated webbing is more expensive that PVC one. Therefore, TPU can not replace PVC completely till now.

When comes to physical performance, TPU is better than PVC. But here we have a kind of material even better than TPU. That is silicone. Silicone is as eco-friendly as TPU while owns better performance. Silicone coated webbing will be much softer than TPU one, which is skin-friendly and has good hand-feeling. It can also maintain its performance in low temperature of minus 60 degrees. This is similar to TPU. But when comes to high-temperature resistance, there is no comparison between silicone and TPU. TPU will start to melt when it in temperature of 80 degrees for some time. However, a silicone product can be used in temperature of 250 to 300 degrees for a long time. Therefore, we can find many cooking utensils in supermarkets. Refers to the feature of silicone, silicone coated webbing will owns better performance than TPU or PVC one. Compared with PVC coated webbing, silicone one is eco-friendly and good to people’s health. Compared with TPU one, silicone coated webbing is softer and owns better hand-feeling. But similar to TPU, silicone is also not cheap. It is even more expensive than TPU. At the same time, there still exists some technology impediments when processing silicone. So silicone coated webbing is not common in the market nowadays.