The nonwovens industry has traditionally been the most dynamic of the textile sector and there is every reason to believe that this growth will continue. However, the catalyst for this growth is innovation. The industry goes through different phases of innovation. For the past decade, advances in equipment, particularly in melt blowing, spunbonding, hyroentanglement, air laying and high speed carding have driven this growth. Yet, it now appears that product innovations will be the accelerator. Towards this end, University of Tennessee (UT) scientists are also actively developing composites. Examples include spunbond (SB)/melt blown (MB), known as SM, and SB/MB/SB (SMS) laminates, which are enhanced by using bicomponent MB PP/PE webs. New cotton-based nonwovens have been developed at UT with sponsorship from Cotton Incorporated. These include cotton-surfaced SB composites, and laminates of SB and MB webs with the promise of marrying air laying equipment with the SB and MB processes.