MadeFrom’s 2021 Materials of the Year
With ever more focus on climate change, net zero targets being published from all sides and the fashion industry finally embracing the idea of a circular economy, it truly feels like 2021 was the year when climate change became a mainstream topic. When all of the world’s eyes and increasingly bigger resources are being pointed in one direction, it is remarkable how quickly innovation starts to happen. Countries and companies are waking up to the urgency of the situation and are no longer treating green solutions as a nice-to-have but rather as their insurance policy to be able to still exist in our low carbon future.
This change was slowly starting a few years ago while I was part of the Raw Materials team at the iconic British trench-coat maker Burberry. I remember a specific season from which the focus shifted from trying to “sneak in” more sustainable materials into the collection to having urgent requests from the Merchandising teams for recycled, certified or otherwise innovative materials. We went from having no communication at all around the sustainability of products to full blown marketing campaigns centered around better materials and planet-friendly capsule collections. This shift was a long time coming and has now accelerated from season to season — today it really stands out if a fashion company has not published its sustainability targets and isn’t displaying an eco-conscious line front and center.
As almost all of the environmental impact that fashion brands have (96% according to World Resource Institute) comes from their manufacturing supply chain and in turn most of that from the raw materials they use, it seems appropriate to examine and highlight the innovation that has happened last year in the field of textile materials.
A key theme across the Materials of the Year is circularity and recycling as the first step of it. We simply must be able to harness the resources that have already been extracted and keep them in circulation for much longer, if we want to maintain similar patterns of consumption that we are used to. The holy grail of a sustainable material is one that takes little resource to produce and can then be recovered and recycled without losing its quality for an infinite number of cycles.
1. Recycled Polyester (made from textile waste)
Hey, this is not that new or innovative! Then why would we have chosen it as a Material of the Year? True, it feels like every sustainable collection these days has a version of recycled polyester as the star material. This is of course great — recycled polyester that is (usually) coming from post consumer single use plastic bottles has a much reduced environmental impact compared to using oil-based virgin plastic as feedstock. We are, however, at a point where we should be looking at the wider impact of using this specific feedstock to replenish our appetite for more fast fashion polyester clothing. While PET bottles can be recycled into new bottles infinitely, the bottle to textile route degrades the quality of the polymer so that there is no going back — it is a one way ticket to landfill after the garment gets used and discarded. The truth is that PET bottles would best be kept in the recycling loop within their own industry.
There is light at the end of the tunnel for the fashion industry too, though. Some amazing advancements have been made in the past years in textile to textile recycling and a few of these technologies are finally getting close to industrial scale. Here’s hoping 2022 will be their year:
- Worn Again in the UK has developed an advanced recycling technology that is able to separate, decontaminate and extract polyester and cellulose (from cotton) from non-reusable textiles. In the previous year they have opened a pilot plant in Redcar, England and are due to open a larger demonstration facility soon to scale the technology up to industrial capacity.
- US based Ambercycle is able to take end-of-life textile waste and separate polyester from cellulosic materials to produce virgin material equivalent quality PET pellets that can be again turned into fabric (marketed as cycora™).
- HKRITA in Hong Kong, China sponsored by the H&M Group has developed a hydrothermal recycling solution which they lovingly call the Green Machine for cotton, polyester and blends in a process that only uses heat, water and citric acid (a naturally occurring chemical found in lemon juice).
2. Recycled Cellulosics
As the second most used fiber in the world, cotton (along with other cellulose-based fibres) deserves its own recycling focus. The challenges are similar to what we’ve already discussed — how to recycle cotton textiles back into cotton textiles without losing fibre quality. Here are a few that are already having some success in this major challenge:
- Texloop™ has been touted as the best quality recycled cotton technology out there and has already supplied Nike, Converse, Arket and H&M to name a few. They process high-value cotton textile waste into RCOT™ recycled cotton mixing it with a minimal amount of virgin fibre to create a new fabric that preserves nearly the original fibre quality.
- Spinnova uses a unique patented technology to spin fibres out of any cellulosic feedstock — wood, straw, cotton textiles, leather waste, you name it — without using neither the harsh chemicals nor water that are normally used in this process. They are currently building a production facility in Finland to increase capacity to industrial scale and have agreed collaborations with some of the key players in the industry such as The North Face.
3. Fruit Waste Fibers
While still at a relatively small scale, using fruit waste fibers really stands out as a sustainability trend in 2021 and is likely to continue going forward. It just has such a great story — using waste from the industries that we all know and consume from (orange juice — definitely, wine — quite likely) and thereby diverting waste from landfill and eliminating the need to grow new raw materials for our latest fit.
- Italy-based Orange Fiber, is making a silk-like fiber out of orange peels — 700,000 tons of which would have ended up in landfills in Sicily. A recipient of H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award and a collaborator in several of their Conscious collections, the company has also worked with luxury fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo.
- Vegea has turned leftover grape skins from the wine industry into a fabric akin to leather and has the backing of the H&M Foundation to help bring it to scale. Materials science/fashion company Pangaia has crafted their first ever sneaker collection out of Vegea “leather”.
- Pinatex — London-based Ananas Anam has developed a natural and non-woven textile out of pineapple leaves, known as Piñatex which is remarkably similar to leather. They work with an impressive number of brands across fashion, footwear and furniture already, most notably with the likes of Hugo Boss and Paul Smith.
Looking ahead into the new year, I’m hopeful that we will see an acceleration of recycling technologies with the increased overall focus on circularity. Circular Textiles is called out as one of the 10 key themes for the fashion industry in 2022 by Business of Fashion and McKinsey’s influential yearly forecast. One thing is certain — there is definitely a lot of exciting innovation happening in the sustainable materials scene and if there is one thing the fashion industry loves it is ‘newness’.
I for one can’t wait to see where this momentum will take us.
Liis Teemusk is our Materials Management Lead at MadeFrom and Low Carbon Business School. Liis joined MadeFrom from the raw materials team at Burberry, and has been working on textiles in the fashion industry for over 10 years.
