You probably know the feeling: You’re doing some cleaning in your wardrobe, and find an old shirt you haven’t been wearing for a while. What to do with it? Give it away? Throw it in the bin as usual? Does it actually get re-used or recycled? By who? How? The numbers are actually quite scary and it seems that the whole textile industry can’t hide its dirty secret anymore. Creating closed loops is very difficult, but not impossible. The whole sector is extremely energy and water intensive. Cotton production is unsustainable most of the time, and reaching its limit already, with demand for fibres set to increase threefold by 2050.
This may be a good occasion to look at alternative materials to make our clothes out of, no? How about bio-materials such as wood fibres, algae, fish skin, milk fibres… Are they relevant alternatives? Or are we going to create more problems? Let’s find out.
