Beyond The Runway: Decarbonizing The Fashion Industry – CleanTechnica

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Like much of our disposable society, the fashion industry has succumbed to quickly-produced trends sold at low price points. Add to that excessive production and consumption within the industry, and fashion is responsible for serious wastes of natural resources.

Approximately 80% of clothing waste worldwide is either dumped in landfills or incinerated, with only a mere 20% being reused or recycled. This exacerbates the carbon footprint as well as raw material and energy losses within the textile industry. The textile industry is a significant source of global greenhouse gas emissions; therefore, it is crucial to implement decarbonization measures throughout the supply chain to reduce carbon emissions and achieve sustainable development.

Surprising Stats of Fashion Industry Waste

A March 2023 report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said that fashion was responsible for up to 10% of annual global carbon emissions. On the production side, overusing oil-based textiles like polyester means that brands rely on fossil fuels to create new products. According to Business of Fashion’s 2023 report, “Oil-based polyester accounts for about 50% of fiber production.”

The global fashion industry is valued at a little over $1.5 trillion. While profitable, it is also destructive. Here are some facts about fashion you should know.

• Up to 100 billion garments are produced by the fashion industry every year.
• Each year, as much as 92 million tons of clothing ends up in landfills.
• Only 20% of textiles are collected for reuse or recycling globally.
• Almost 60% of all clothing material is actually plastic. Nylon, acrylic, and polyester textiles are just a few examples of these synthetic fibers that have become so ubiquitous in our wardrobes.
• Textile production generates 42 million tons of plastic waste per year, making the textile industry the second-highest industrial sector after packaging.
• Every time a synthetic garment is washed, it releases tiny plastic microfibers into the water. Up to 500,000 tons of microfibers end up in the ocean every year.
• Textiles and fashion waste account for 9% of annual microplastic pollution added to our oceans.
• The footwear industry and garment industry combined are responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

What can be done? Of course, the first target of change is always the consumer. We can join the secondhand clothing movement and buy upcycled or organic clothing. But the real culprits are the producers, and they must be prodded/ incentivized/ boycotted to engage in innovative production and manufacturing methods to reduce waste and pollution at every stage of the textile production process.

Case Study: How Fashion Can Break Fossil Fuel Dependence

Normal Phenomena of Life (NPOL) is a lifestyle brand illuminating groundbreaking biotechnology solutions pivotal for a circular bioeconomy. They fuse biotechnology, design, and craft to develop products that catalyze alternative models. It’s an online platform launched in 2023 by Natsai Audrey Chieza, the founder of London-based R&D studio Faber Futures, and Christina Agapakis, the creative director of Boston-based biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks.

“Nature has evolved over billions of years to assemble atoms in much smarter and more efficient ways than human beings have been able to achieve. And so, as we look to decarbonize and divest from fossil fuels, it turns out that nature has solutions that biotechnology is enabling us to leverage,” Chieza told Wired.

Their websites states they’re trying to “inspire a deeper connection to the living world,” and, to do so, they curate a selection of emerging biotech-enabled brands already making a positive social and environmental impact.

NPOL’s mission is founded on three pivotal pillars:

Biotech-enabled Materials: Advances in biotechnology are crafting revolutionary materials and processes that break fossil fuel dependence, cut carbon emissions, and safeguard human and environmental health. NPOL partners with biotech companies across sectors, including textiles, beauty, personal care, and construction. Together, these translate innovations into thoughtful design. The underlying biological processes driving these materials demonstrate a wide range of benefits quantified by biotech companies through tools like their Life-Cycle Analysis. They share those claims via their products and partner Index.

Bio-centric Industry: Decarbonizing and healing the planet requires companies to go beyond choosing low-impact materials and processes. Putting biology at the heart of the goods they make, the supply chains they build, and the economies they choose to scale represents a systems-led approach to achieving this goal. Their NPOL Originals demonstrate the value of biomaterials through low-impact design products. They source all their product inputs from ethical and certified suppliers, develop their supply chain as close to the end user as possible, and make design decisions on product development routed in their aspiration to see a circular bioeconomy enabled by biotechnology. Producing lower volumes, released as drops informed by demand, the possess an agility to assess the impacts of each of their NPOL Originals, creating the conditions for open-ended learning and fine-tuning.

Biophilic Culture: Their commitment to creating low-impact products with biotechnology is contingent on growing a community whose culture is rooted in biophilia. They seek to empower this community with the knowledge and aspiration to lead a cultural revolution towards planet-centered living, aided by the products they develop as well as the stories they tell. Their journal curates diverse narratives about their relationships with the living world, offering glimpses into the visionaries shaping this future. Putting the living world at the forefront of their mission and strategy is key to manifesting a behavioral change towards mindful consumption for the love of nature.

NPOL also works with like-minded brands to help bring their products to market. “We’re trying to speed up how these technologies are created and deployed,” she says. Many biodesigned materials are difficult to scale as they have to be carefully engineered, which often translates into high price points. The Exploring Jacket retails at £4,000 (around $5,400), which Chieza says is already priced lower than it should be. “It’s really amazing when something happens in the lab, but the question is, do we have the infrastructure to match the scale-up journey?”

Consumers probably don’t realize the steps that take place behind the scenes at NPOL to assure that their products achieve low carbon status. “On one hand, that’s good because it means we’re meeting their expectations of what a product should be,” she says. “Of course, we want them to notice that our product is beautiful and amazing and different, but purchasing decisions are sometimes made around what feels familiar and dependable. It’s a very interesting balance we have to articulate.”

Through leveraging at the source “to make redundant products that don’t bring meaning,” Chieza describes the results as “hopefully beautiful products that people are going to learn from.”