How climate positive clothing is shaping the ecological position of fashion
From using custom-made, biodegradable materials and "living" dresses that photosynthesise to polyester created from planet-warming skin tightening and, European start-ups are on a quest to transform one of the world's most polluting industries - fashion.
The business is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions, a lot more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined during the pre-pandemic period, said the US Environment Programme (UNEP).
A sizable chunk of fashion's emissions - up to 40% - result from the produce of polyester, the most-used textile, said Benoit Illy, co-founder and CEO of French start-up Fairbrics.
"If we can get emissions from polyester to zero or perhaps negative value, we can drastically reduce sector emissions," he said in a good telephone interview.
Illy and co-founder Tawfiq Nasr Allah, both chemists, try to replace existing polyester-producing functions, which use fossil fuels, with their latest technology.
It uses power and a catalyst to carefully turn skin tightening and - emitted when fossil fuels are burned and a significant driver of climate change - into man made fibres, Illy said.
In some respects, the procedure is comparable to trees capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and using sunlight and natural enzymes to create fibre, he said.
By the start of next year, Fairbrics - its brand identifies a "fairer" way of making fabrics - expects to be able to produce a kilogramme of polyester yarn a day, he said.
The firm's aim is take the effort to professional scale in early 2024, he said. The area for scale-up is apparent. The style industry currently consumes a lot more than 60 million tonnes of polyester a year, Illy said.
Inspired by nature
Under great pressure from increasingly environmentally-aware buyers, brands from luxury fashion properties to high street names also are taking steps to reduce waste.
This month, H&M, the world's second-biggest fashion retailer, said it could showcase a recycling model that could turn old jumpers into new sweaters or scarves at that moment at a store in Stockholm.
Every second, a garbage truck worth of textiles is landfilled or burnt, a costly waste of resources, according to a foundation setup by retired British sailing star Ellen MacArthur.
If Aniela Hoitink, founder of Dutch provider MycoTEX, has her approach, however, people's wardrobes would adopt a far more biological lifecycle, with garments grown and in the future decomposed in the way trees grow and drop leaves.
She is working with mycelium - the feeding threads of mushrooms - to produce custom-fitted, on-demand outfits that reduces waste and cuts chemical use.
Towards the end of its life - at the least 2 yrs - the garments would be biodegradable. The production routine - growing mycelium, harvesting it, putting it right into a 3D mould, drying it and finishing the ultimate product - currently takes about 2-3 weeks, said Hoitink, who spent some time working in fashion for more than a decade.
The 3D modelling also permits seamless garments that are comfortable and flawlessly fitted, Hoitink said.
"When you have a good customised garment, it's (a) high class. But we assume that with this production system we are able to do this on a mass scale," she said.
In particular, the material will make it easy to form garments for different physique types and market segments, she added.
"Right now, everything is based on Western sizes. But African bodies are quite different. Asian bodies are very different. If we are able to design with those different body types in mind, it would be much nicer for everybody."
Climate positive clothing?
London-based Post Carbon Lab really wants to take emissions-cutting even further, making sure fashion and design have a positive influence on the climate by turning fabric into carbon-absorbing surfaces.
Designers and researchers Dian-Jen Lin and Hannes Hulstaert do that using photosynthetic coating technology which involves introducing microorganisms, such as for example algae, to the fabric.
The resulting textile, with live organisms, may then absorb climate-changing carbon dioxide, Lin said.
According to her, having a "living" garment does need a different group of care, and users have to give it some access to moisture - such as an open window in a rainy day - together with ventilation and light.
Fairbrics, MycoTEX and Content Carbon Lab are 3 of the 10 finalists found in the 2020 European Social Innovation Competition, which is targeted on fashion and work by the European Commission.
Other finalists, chosen from a lot more than 760 applicants, include Germany's Kleiderly, which recycles textile waste products into new material, and Belgium-based Resortecs' dissolvable stitching which allows for convenient recycling and reuse.
Your competition, now in its eighth year, wants practical solutions to key environmental and social issues and has focused in past years on issues such as for example cutting plastic waste and better integrating refugees, said Sonya Gospodinova, a European Union spokeswoman.
Three winners are expected to be announced on November 26, with each getting 50,000 euros (RM243,000) in prize money, the organisers said.
"What's the ecological role of fashion?" asked Post Carbon Lab's Lin.
"If we don't possess the environment, where essentially most of us live, there's nothing. There's no society, no content communities to build on. And... the clock is normally ticking." - Thomson Reuters Foundation
Source: www.thestar.com.my
