Simplifyber — One Small Planet’s View for a Better Fashion Solution

Clothing is ubiquitous. For every culture, adornment plays a key role in daily life. It is an expression of practicality, artistry, custom, and history — and in most environments, a necessity. And of course, clothing takes many forms, from used and thrifty, to lavish and extravagant. The fashion industry is a $2 trillion a year global industry.

Irrespective of whether we buy Wal-Mart Brands, Nike, or Prada, we all buy clothes and most likely every year. Unless you work in the textile industry, you are most likely familiar with the end-product, often neatly presented in stores or online. In our purchases, as with many industries, there are a wide-array of steps and processes we never see and rarely consider. Clothing and fashion in particular has a very opaque and fragmented supply-chain, which makes exact tracking of its global damage to ecosystems challenging. However, the Harvard Business Review estimates that between 4% to 10% of global carbon emissions stem from the international fashion industry.

“more than 50% of the fashion industry’s environmental footprint lies in the raw materials stage.”

Of the estimated 4%–10% of global carbon emissions, 70% is generated from upstream activities such as materials production (creating fabrics), preparation (cut & sew), and processing. In short, most of the pollution from fashion is from the earlier, less glamorous steps long before any of us see the garments. Fashion For Good and the Boston Consulting Group have stated that more than 50% of the fashion industry’s environmental footprint lies in the raw materials stage.

For myself, it is hard to know what these percentages actually mean, so let me illustrate it this way; on an annual basis, 40 million tonnes of textile waste is sent to a landfill or incinerated. This is equivalent to 88 billion pounds of clothing waste that is buried in the earth or burned — and much of that is materials that cause various degrees of environmental harm.

This is one of many critical problems within our environmental crisis. Note, this is not to single out the fashion industry, this is but one aspect of our modern economy we are working to ameliorate. Unfortunately, the fashion industry has done little in the way of technological advancement in the last 120+ years — and is still reliant on very old-fashioned milling, spinning, cutting and sewing, which often requires extensive shipping and wasted fabrics.

The swift transition away from wasteful materials in major industries is one of the ways One Small Planet is aiming at the creation of a better future. For that reason, we are optimistic

Simplifyber has an opportunity to help make the world a more balanced, harmonious place, not only for each of us, but also our children and the broader web of life we live in.

Simplifyber has developed cellulose-based, fully biodegradable materials which can be formed from a liquid directly into 3D clothing and accessories in one step. No need for fabric, no need for cutting and sewing. This is exciting because it greatly simplifies and fundamentally changes the creation of garments, including transport, wasted fabric, cutting, milling and sewing. This shift in the supply chain of the fashion industry would contribute to two outcomes: 1) a conservative estimate of reducing over 50% of the upstream carbon emissions, and aiming at reducing water contamination as well, and 2) it is cheaper and faster than traditional processes. It is hard to argue with a process that reduces waste AND creates products more cheaply and efficiently.

While it is early for Simplifyber, we are proud to be backing such an amazing team, with a vision of helping the entire fashion industry have economical, renewable alternatives, and supporting the creation of regenerative clothing supply chains.

The round was a seed round led by At One Ventures (full disclosure we are a Limited Partner with At One, and a huge believer in the team’s mission and execution with deep science expertise). Our research led to One Small Planet’s strong desire to close out the round, believing deeply in both the business and environmental thesis — reiterating an affordable and expedient production methodology that also improves environmental outcomes. Simplifyber is continuing to refine their material and procedure and is in early talks with major brands, including a recent pilot with Hewlett Packard and Adidas, as featured in Fast Company (Fast Company — Simplifyber).

We also believe deeply in the team, another core part of our investment thesis. The CEO is Maria Intscher-Owrang, an esteemed fashion designer, hoping to help change an industry she loves and Phil Cohen, COO, with a deep product and manufacturing background.

Notes from the field, Southern California, 10.10.2022

1 Estimates from Mckinsey and the U.N., respectively
2 According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation
3 Cellulose is the world’s most abundant biopolymer, which is to say, it is made from fully natural materials
4 Where Simplifyber was utilized, which admittedly is unlikely to be anywhere near 100% of global fabric manufacturing