Source: GOLD

Using existing resources and creating something new from them: What if you didn’t dispose of the leftovers of freshly squeezed juice – but could create a new  material from it? Germany is at the forefront of apple juice consumption, producing up to 200,000 tonnes of pomace per year, solid residues from the pressing process. Instead of reusing them, as has been the case up to now, mainly in biogas plants, for pectin extraction or as animal feed, textile and surface designer Verena Brom has been inspired to develop new material systems for various industries.

The designer studied at the Weißensee Art Academy in Berlin. In the project “A Matter of Fruit“, she produces various biodegradable films from pomace residues that can be used instead of synthetic material. Visually and characteristically, it can be classified as a paper, plastic or leather alternative, depending on its thickness, and offers potential for different areas of application – from interior design to the clothing industry. The material is suitable for laser cutting and engraving, but due to its fusibility it can also be welded or pressed into shape. In addition to the films, Verena Brom has developed a printing paste made from apple pomace that further expands the material’s design  possibilities and areas of application.

After the first cycle of use, the material can be returned to the natural loop: For example, it can be turned into a plant pot that biologically decomposes after being potted into the soil. This brings Verena Brohm closer to her goal of using renewable resources – such as the by-products of the food industry – and to use design as a tool to optimise material cycles.

Luigi Maria Cialdini – VIFREX STUDIO

In the past five years, groundbreaking science has been changing the clothing industry one experiment at a time. With a ravenous appetite for new fabrics, some great candidates have been castor bean-derived nylons, mushroom leather, and synthetic spider silks. Designed to correct some of the textile industry’s wrongs, new materials have been enticing the attention of some of the most prominent players in the fashion industry, which is an excellent thing. 

Introducing Cutting Edge Atelier  

As we enter a new material age, there has been an influx of fabric alternatives being researched and explored. So even though it may all seem pretty experimental right now, here are five companies making many of us believe that new materials will become the norm over traditional ones.

AlgiKnit 

Is biology the future of fashion? Well, AlgiKnit seems to think so. The biomaterials company has been developing biomaterials that can play a vital role in the future of sustainable manufacturing.

By addressing the ecological damage caused by the fashion industry, AlgiKnit is making an impact by operating in a closed-loop product lifecycle that will bring sustainable bio-based textile alternatives to the footwear and apparel industries.

The biomaterials startup focuses on transforming the apparel ecosystem with rapidly renewable bio-based textiles. AlgiKnit has found a way of utilising materials with a significantly lower environmental footprint than conventional textiles. One of these materials is Kelp. Considered to be one of the fastest-growing organisms on earth – up to 10 times faster than bamboo. “Kelp is grown in aquatic farms around the world in coastal communities, often by fishermen and women, providing income during the fishing off-season,” states their site.

One of the benefits of Kelp, according to Fashion United is that it improves the environment by absorbing nutrients from agricultural and sewer run-off that can alter coastal settings. This recaptures nutrients for the next generation of biomaterials. Also, Algiknit’s biopolymer is entirely customisable.

Picture credit: Algiknit

MyCoWorks

Founded by Philip Ross, Sophia Wang and Eddie Pavlu, the California startup MyCoWorks comprises a team of creative engineers, designers, and scientists. Their distinctive disciplines gave birth to a rapidly renewable natural resource called mycelium.

According to Insider.com, Mycelia are thread-like masses of fungi that grow underground. They run through almost every square inch of earth, delivering nutrients and allowing plants to “talk” to each other. MyCoWorks has innovatively used fungi to create a textile that performs like leather. On the mushroom-like material, Wang admitted to it being “a new thing in the world.”

So what does mycelium bring to the table? Well, MyCoWorks have presented mycelium as the solution to replace the resource-intensive product, leather. Relying on nature’s best tools, they have created a new kind of leather that can multiply from mycelium using a carbon-negative process. In addition, their custom-engineered material is sustainable, versatile, and animal-free. On MyCoWorks new leather, Dr Amanda Parkes, Chief Technology and Research at Manufacture NY, shared, “I believe we can solve all the world’s problems with mycelium biology”.

Picture credit: MyCoWorks

Desserto

Cactus vegan leather is nothing new. The material first came to our attention back in 2019. We wrote about how the two entrepreneurs, Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez, developed and showcased their vegan leather material at the International Leather Fair Lineapelle 2019. 

Made with cactus, the alternative to animal leather was heralded as a high resistance vegan cactus leather that would appeal to the fashion, interior and car industries.

Named Desserto, the cost-competitive material has been designed and developed to meet the most rigorous standards from the Aeronautic to the Fashion industries. That being said, not everyone has sung their praises. For example, Dr Ashley Holding and Paula Lorenz outed the Desserto material as partly vegan leather with cactus; the rest they described in a write-up was “undefined chemicals”. Although the founders have shared that the chemicals they use are non-toxic, it is not a truth revealed so openly by Desserto. Instead, the Mexican startup concentrated on the fact that their material was ‘PVC Free’ and did not contain a particular type of plastic.

Picture credit: Desserto

Agraloop

Picture credit: Agraloop

Modern Meadow

Modern Meadow exists at the intersection of performance, scalable adoption and sustainability. The company began with an R&D initiative to develop a sustainable alternative to leather, which led to a breakthrough discovery of proteins as functional ingredients.  

Harnessing the power of design, biology, and engineering, in 2017, Modern Meadow launched their prototype materials brand, ZOA. With the ability to impact a range of products across multiple industries, Modern Meadow state on their website: “Our experiments and exploration within ZOA led to the creation of Bio-Alloy™ and its application in a wide range of high-performing, low-waste bio fabricated materials, and our unique capabilities to create functional, animal-free proteins.”

Scaling by partnering with forward-thinking developers, manufacturers, and brands, Modern Meadow continues to educate industries on the possibilities of a biomaterial future.

A ubiquitous wardrobe staple, denim is one of the most prevalent fabrics of our time. Developed through the ages, those behind the widely used material are on a mission to transform the global apparel business into a cleaner, more ethical and more sustainable industry.

It is no secret that denim production is negatively impacting the environment.

Still, the good news is that more and more manufacturers, brands, retailers, and consumers are making an immense effort to undertake the issues related to the production of denim. Furthermore, driven by buzz words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘recycling’, many denim businesses are turning to new technologies to help them attain the most sustainable system possible.

When the denim industry becomes more sustainable, we need a new approach. The good news is that the technology has advanced to the point where we can make a big difference in reducing the environmental footprint of denim. Here are some great examples of some of the revolutionary approaches that have been introduced to the denim industry in the past few years.

Smart Factory 4.0: Denim’s Greenest Ecosystem 

Crescent Bahuman is taking the denim industry on a journey. Understanding the need for the industry to digitise, Zaki Saleemi, vice president of Crescent Bahuman, believes that one of the ways of doing this is through intelligent decisions supported by data.

Saleemi explained to Sourcing Journal that the intelligent factory is designed to give on-site managers real-time information on shop floor activity and other vital sustainability-related metrics like water measurements. The upgrade is a digitization plan that can help a denim company “get organised, get connected, get insights, and get optimised”.

Another exciting development is that Crescent Bahuman is also implementing the blockchain-enabled PaperTale, which shows the entire map of the supply chain – where the cotton came from, where it was manufactured, and where it got converted into fabric.

Picture credit: Levi Strauss

Levi’s Earth Conscious Robotic Technology 

The majority of jeans are washed for hours to achieve that perfect blue colour, and the result is that the dyes end up polluting the groundwater. Looking back to a time when new innovation was leaving its mark on the denim industry, Levi came up with laser technology that made creating ripped and washed jeans easier and more efficient. 

Looking to reduce the man-hours put in by designers trying to figure out the perfect fade and the time factory workers spend sandpapering the jeans, Levi’s is also determined to lessen the harsh chemicals that give jeans that much sought after faded look.

G-Star Raw: Pioneering New Means of Production

When it comes to sustainability, G-Star RAW is not only talking the talk; they are proving their commitment by continuously challenging the conventions of denim design.

Pioneering new means of production while maintaining an uncompromising dedication to quality and style, a few years ago, G-Star came up with a step-by-step process of how the Elwood RFTPi Jean came about. It was a process that pioneered a radical new dyeing method which is hydro and salt-free. They called the process Crystal Clear.

Considered to be the most radical change at the time when it comes to indigo dyeing process, the formula, even in its infancy, showed off its potential to play a part in saving the environment.

Picture credit: Science News for Students

Helping the Denim Industry Go Green

Combining economy and ecology, Sedo Engineering’s innovation is helping the denim industry go green. The Swiss innovation specialists have developed smart-INDIGO to help denim brands quickly move towards this sustainable production structure with more benefits at lower costs. Instead of toxic chemicals, Sedo Engineering uses only electricity and caustic soda to dissolve indigo dyes.

Giving out oxygen instead of toxic wastewater, smart-INDIGO reduces water use by 70 per cent, energy consumption by six times and carbon emission by ten times. The innovation is a “win-win solution for our clients”, says Werner Volkaert, managing director of Sedo Engineering.

With 17 smart-INDIGO machines operating worldwide, Sedo Engineering hopes to bring a revolutionary change to the denim industry.

With the rapid global increase in textile waste caused by the growth of the clothing and textile industry and fast fashion among consumers, textile recycling has become paramount.

The problem is that recycling textile is not an easy feat.

Many factors need to be considered. The most challenging obstacle to textile recycling is that the fabrics are often made from blended materials, and it is not easy to recycle mixed materials. This is mainly because each textile needs to be isolated before being effectively recycled. So as the fashion industry feels the pressure to move toward closed-loop production, what is the solution?

Picture credit: MDPI

Game-Changing Solutions Explained

Well, with various groundbreaking methods in the works, like the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA), who came up with a solution that makes it possible to recycle blended material into new fabrics and yarns without any quality loss. They can do this thanks to a hydrothermal (chemical) process.

Working together with H&M Foundation, they successfully developed a process that can fully separate and recycle cotton and polyester blends. The recovered polyester material can be reused directly, creating new benefits of recycling without any quality loss. The hydrothermal process uses only heat, water and less than 5% biodegradable green chemical to self-separate cotton and polyester blends. This fibre-to-fibre recycling method is cost-effective, and there’s no secondary pollution to the environment, ensuring the life of the recycled material is prolonged sustainably. The technology will be licensed widely to provide broad market access and maximum impact.

Then there is the Swedish company Södra. They have come up with a unique recycling solution that could influence how the fashion industry recycles its textiles.

Designed to enable large-scale textile recycling, the Södra, a significant forestry cooperative based in Växjö, Sweden, has come up with a unique solution that solves this fundamental obstacle to the textile industry. The pioneering solution makes it possible to recycle textiles on a large scale.

Using its resources and expertise for an innovative textile recycling solution, Södra has found a way to recycle fibres from blended fabrics on a large scale. They did this by enabling circular flows in the fashion and textile industry.

The Fashion for Good Full Circle Textiles Project turned to innovative recycling technologies to close the loop on textile waste. The project’s objective was to explore the potential to reduce the environmental impact of textile waste; the textile-to-textile recycling solution has the potential to eliminate the industry’s dependence on virgin raw materials.

Supported by C&A, Martha Willis, Senior Manager of Sustainable Materials and Circular Innovation at C&A says: “This project will help us all in understanding the barriers, impacts and opportunities in the chemical recycling of polyester and is an important foundation to C&A’s commitment to connecting principles of circularity to 7 out of 10 of our products by 2028.”

Focusing on investigating economically viable and scalable solutions, the Full Circle Textiles Project has accomplished their objective scale of disruptive innovation in the industry and the capability of chemical recycling to accelerate circularity.

“The next phase of the project focuses on scaling these solutions and encourages brands, innovators, and supply chain partners to create long-term partnerships, catalyse funding to enable scaling, and leverage industry expertise to develop and implement these technologies further,” says Fashion For Good.

The C&A supported project, which was launched in September 2020, was successfully executed. Read the outcomes and learnings of the project here.

Conclusion

So is recycling textile waste a viable solution or short term plan?

I think that the aim should be to develop the infrastructure necessary to scale textile recycling, and to do this, fashion businesses need to take advantage of upcoming technological developments. By working together toward a common goal, we will get one step closer to a more sustainable textile recycling process, with the end goal of contributing to facilitating a circular economy.

Innovative, intelligent, interactive: MotorSkins is a pioneering start-up in the field of shape-changing soft-robotic textiles. The Berlin-based company produces garments that help muscles move without any electronics such as batteries or motors – making them a pioneer in the industry. The first item produced is a compression garment for the legs.

As an interface between sport, wellness and health, the start-up creates products that can be used medically, for relaxation or to support movement, depending on requirements. Currently, the young, international team at MotorSkins is working on textiles that are attached to the joints to make running easier – either for normal movements or also for illnesses. Inspired by nature, made for people.