I’m sure you are aware of how polluting and unsustainable the fashion industry is. But with this article, I want to dig a little deeper and unveil shocking numbers to show you something about this industry that, maybe, you still haven’t heard about. Are you ready?
- Every second 2,625 kilograms of clothes are burned or landfilled. They could fill a garbage truck.
- Every day we waste enough clothes to fill 1.5 Empire State Buildings.
- Every year we get rid of 82,782,000,000 kilograms of clothes (I can barely read this number!) enough to fill Sydney Harbor.
Can you see it? Can you see how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere, how many raw materials are wasted, how much useless stuff we buy and throw away too easily? This is insane! As if the harmful impacts on the environment weren’t enough, the fashion industry is sadly famous for workers’ exploitation too.
We need to act now. How? First of all, we have to say “stop!” to fast fashion – or the fashion model of buying, wearing, and quickly discarding clothes. Then, we need to replace fast fashion items with sustainable ones made by fairly paid workers and made with innovative fabrics.
Did you know that the newest sustainable fabrics come from ocean garbage patches, waste products, and by-products? Most of them leave no trace behind at the of their life cycle because can be recycled and remodeled, or are biodegradable. Let’s explore together the latest fabric innovation that will make our transition and our immersion in the world of sustainable fashion easier and amazing!
1. Desserto
Desserto is a new and sustainable alternative fabric to animal leather and other synthetic materials made from cactus leaves. Desserto has a high resistance to abrasion, rubbing, tearing, tensile, and great durability. It comes from a crop that, compared to others, is able to adapt to extreme climatic conditions and flourish in areas where nothing else can grow.
Cactus doesn’t need to be irrigated: it absorbs humidity from the atmosphere, stores rainwater, and has an overall low water consumption. Indeed, 1 kilogram of cactus biomass only takes 200 liters to grow, while other crops require around 1,000 liters. Moreover, cactus has a great CO2 absorbing capacity, it is a natural carbon sink!
Handbags, footwear, apparel, and interiors are the main applications of this innovative fabric! Desserto vegan leather can be customized in color, texture, and thickness… I’m honestly in love with that beautiful shade of green that reminds me of nothing but a cactus!
2. Apple Skin
This plant-based and vegan alternative fabric to animal leather blew my mind when I discovered it! Can you believe that Apple Skin is literally made from apple skins and cores? Believe it or not, it’s true and it was developed in the Tyrol region (Italy) as a response to the huge amount of by-products from the annual production of apples, and to the increasing demand for ecological and cruelty-free alternatives.
Cellulose extracted from apple by-products is made into a fiber which is then woven into a fabric that can be easily customized with a variety of textures, thicknesses, embossing, and laser prints.
Being a bio-based leather, Apple Skin is fully biodegradable, waterproof, breathable, and durable. This new fabric is suitable for purses, wallets, handbags, sneakers, apparel, and house furniture.
3. Orange Fiber
Orange Fiber is an exclusive fabric made from the orange by-product that comes after the squeezing, otherwise useless, which represents about 50% of the weight of the processed citrus. The orange by-product contains precious cellulose that, after extraction, can be spun as any other type of yarn.
The orange fabric is highly versatile, it can be opaque or shiny depending on consumers and their requests. Many luxury brands have already used Orange Fiber in their capsule collections celebrating the uniqueness of this fabric.
Thanks to its silkiness and softness Orange Fiber is a sustainable alternative to non-organic cotton, synthetic silks, and a cruelty-free alternative to real silk.
4. Piñatex
Another sustainable and cruelty-free alternative to animal leather comes again from food and its waste product. I’m talking about Piñatex, an innovative plant-based fabric made from pineapple leaves, which are a by-product of the pineapple harvest, usually burned or discarded.
Piñatex is made from raw materials that already exist, as such no additional environmental resources are required for its production. Moreover, the manufacturing process leftover is used as a natural fertilizer. By giving value to a waste product, the Piñatex manufacturing process is also a new source of income for many Philippines farming communities who otherwise rely only on a seasonal harvest.
Piñatex fabric is strong, lightweight, and flexible, characteristics that make it suitable for footwear, bags, interiors, and automotive applications.
RELATED: Vegan Handbags On A Budget (Stylish, No Fast Fashion, Under $100)
5. Bananatex
Bananatex is a sustainable alternative to the synthetic fabrics used in the bags’ production. It is made from the Abacá plant, a species of banana native to the Philippines, and it is a durable, waterproof, and completely biodegradable fabric.
Bananatex is made from the stalks of the plant, which is sturdy and self-sufficient, requiring no pesticides, other chemicals, or extra water to grow. Each Abacá plant has several stalks that are harvested once a year, and take one year to fully regenerate. The leaves are not used in the manufacturing process, but they are essential too! They are left to decompose on the ground, creating a natural fertilizer.
This innovative fabric has contributed to reforestation in areas eroded by soil damage due to palm plantations, and a natural beeswax coating makes it waterproof.
6. S.Café
Can you smell that enchanting roasting aroma? Yeah, it’s coffee, the most popular drink worldwide! More than two billion cups are consumed every day and as many coffee grounds are created. S.Café is an innovative fabric made from coffee grounds that takes advantage of the natural ability of coffee to absorb odors.
Clothes made with S.Café fabric dry up to 200% faster compared to cotton clothes, plus they are extremely comfortable and durable, and they can even reflect UV rays all day long! These special characteristics make S.Café fabric ideal for outwear and sportswear.
From now on I’m sure that your daily coffee will taste even better!
7. Vegea
Vegea, also known as “wine leather” or “grape leather”, is a type of vegan leather made thanks to a highly innovative production process able to transform and valorize the wine production waste – the grape skins, seeds, and stalks – into a new fabric adopted for fashion, furniture, packaging, automotive, and transportation.
No toxic solvents, heavy metals, or dangerous substances for humans and the environment are involved in the production of Vegea, and the water consumption is almost nil.
The meaning of this fabric name fascinates me: VEGEA is the combination of VEG (Vegan) and GEA (Mother Earth in Ancient Greek). It highlights the impelling need for alternative sustainable materials to totally oil-based and animal-derived ones.
8. Qmonos
I swear I don’t want to scare you… but it’s time to talk about spiders! As it turns out, spiders have a lot to teach – they are expert spinners after all! Qmonos is a fabric made from synthetic spider silk, produced without the spiders but using their silk genes and microbes.
Qmonos is a vegan, animal-free, fully biodegradable fabric, and a great alternative to petroleum-based fabrics. The fiber is suitable for extreme sportswear because it is as lightweight as comfy, and stronger than steel!
9. Nullarbor Fibre
Nullarbor Fibre is a highly innovative wool-like fabric made from liquid coconut by-products thanks to bacteria that naturally ferment and convert the waste into cellulose. The whole process takes less than one month. Then the fiber is ready to be spun into yarn, transformed into the fabric, and manufactured into garments as comfortable as cashmere, perfect for knitwear.
Clothes made from Nullarbor Fibre are a vegan and cruelty-free alternative to wool, but Nullarbor is even more! Indeed, it’s an eco-friendly alternative to traditional fabrics made from tree cellulose like rayon. Rayon is a widely used animal-free alternative to wool, but it’s not that sustainable: millions of trees are cut down every year, and then treated with dangerous chemicals to create the fabric. Nullarbor saves both sheep and trees.
We can basically eat coconut, use it for cosmetic purposes, and even wear it!
10. Woocoa
Coconut by-product, hemp, and oyster mushroom are the plant-based ingredients for the latest vegan and sustainable alternative to wool. Woocoa – created by a group of university students who won the PETA Prize for Animal-Free Wool in 2018 – is a 100% biodegradable fabric, and has a lot of amazing characteristics.
Woocoa combines the hygroscopic, thermal, and antimicrobial properties of coconut with the durable, elongated, easy-to-dye, and environmentally-friendly properties of hemp. Thanks to some naturally occurring enzymes in oyster mushrooms, which eliminate the typical roughness of plant cells, Woocoa is a soft and smooth fabric that won’t make you regret wool!
11. SeaCell
So far we have explored the hidden potential of terrestrial plants and food by-products… let’s dive now into the sea, here too there is something to discover about fabrics. I want to present you SeaCell, a new, sustainable, high-tech, and silk-like fabric made from seaweed.
What I find fascinating about SeaCell are the positive and beneficial effects on our skin! Thanks to a manufacturing process with no waste chemicals, the fabric preserve the natural elements of seaweed – vitamins, trace elements, amino acids, and minerals – which help to protect our skin against the harmful environmental influences and free radical in our daily lives.
SeaCell is carbon-neutral, biodegradable, and suitable for a lot of applications: sportswear, underwear, loungewear, and interiors.
12. Econyl
From cactus and pineapple leaves to coffee and coconut, we have explored how plants can be used and reused as raw materials to create highly innovative, sustainable, and higher quality fabrics. However, we must not forget that our planet suffers from unprecedented plastic pollution. That’s why we also need new alternatives for synthetic clothing that contains plastic fibers.
Made from recovered ghost fishing nets, old carpets, fabric scraps, and industrial plastic destinated to landfills, Econyl is a type of regenerated nylon that can be recycled and recreated, over and over again. Econyl is as pure as fossil-based nylon, and every 10,000 tons of Econyl save 70,000 barrels of crude oils and avoid 65,100 tons of CO2.
Econyl is also a great example of commitment to a better environment: last year, 57,200 kilograms of fishing nets were collected from the oceans and seas, as such preventing the unneeded death of marine animals. Econyl is used for sportswear, swimwear, rugs, and interiors.
Buying a product made with Econyl means preventing waste from ending up in landfills, cleaning up oceans, whilst being able to recycle it infinitely. Awesome, isn’t it?
Take-Home Message
12 sustainable and alternative fabrics might seem a drop in the ocean, but keep in mind that every single purchase decision counts and is a further step towards a fashion industry not based on environmental, human, and animal exploitation.
I want to sum-up some key points:
- Choosing a plant-based leather means supporting a change towards a cruelty-free fashion industry.
- Choosing a recycled synthetic fabric means saving CO2 and even recovering plastic from the sea.
- Choosing a consciously grown fiber means giving the environment time to regenerate resources that are not infinite.
It’s time to be more mindful of what we buy, use, and, above all, of how much we buy and use. It’s time to start using sustainable fabrics, materials, and textiles.
The newest fabrics show that it is possible to make luxury- and high-quality clothing from materials that would otherwise be thrown away, helping the environment and workers at the same time.
As I always love to say, never forget to question yourself, to be curious, and to look for alternatives!
Sources:
Alberta Bernardi
Alberta Bernardi is a Ph.D. in Management, Innovation, and Sustainable Development. She likes to call herself a “sustainability warrior” because she aims to spread knowledge on the environment, ethics, and plastic pollution day after day. Her love of nature and battle against plastic around the world are on Instagram @together_no_plastic
