Even after years of "deplasticization" movements ( especially in the beauty industry ) , the fashion industry still has a high dependence on and consumption of plastic products. According to estimates cited by the nonprofit fashion for Good, plastic bags alone are used by the global fashion industry more than 180 billion per year.
The treatment of plastic bags is not only about the protection of soil and water, but also about human beings themselves. As early as 2008, ecotoxicologist Mark Browne had confirmed through the Blue Mussel Experiment that the vast majority of organisms, including humans, could not completely excrete plastic fragments of less than 5 mm in diameter that entered the body from nature through metabolism, according to Re-Green Fashion Sustainability. In 2018, researchers detected the presence of microplastics in human feces for the first time and found that the smallest microplastics can enter the blood, lymphatic system and even the liver. Plastic products are full of our lives, and the friction between car tires and road surfaces may even produce a certain amount of microplastics, but commodity packaging has always been one of the largest sources of microplastics.
The fashion industry, which is committed to sustainability, will certainly not abandon its ongoing efforts to improve this issue.
Three years ago, drawing on the experience of Kering, Adidas and PVH, Fashion for Good launched its own recycling bag pilot project to try to explore solutions for the recycling and recyclability of plastic bags through competitions, but postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
In November 2020, the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize, co-founded by designer Tom Ford, the ocean cleanup nonprofit Lonely Whale and Nike, and other collaborators, debuted to unite innovative forces to find solutions for the fashion industry to find non-plastic bags that are fully biodegradable.
The selection criteria of the Innovation Award require that the participating schemes have true originality, implementation, development prospects, and must meet environmental and social standards, which means that these schemes can not only stay in the stage of creative paper, and even need to provide the fashion industry with real alternatives that meet industry performance standards and are lower than the existing costs.
Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize promotional poster
On March 29, the Innovation Competition Committee announced a list of eight startups that made it to the finals. This list presents a surprising and exciting picture of a sustainable fashion future:
Canadian biotech company Genecis reprograms bacteria with organic waste; Kenyan social enterprise Lwanda Biotech focuses on dealing with community-wide plastic pollution and agricultural waste; Xampla, a Cambridge-based spin-off company inspired by the power of spider silk, to transform plant proteins such as peas into high-performance plastic alternatives; British biotech company Kelpi and Iceland's Marea are both committed to the full development of seaweed. The new London-based company Notpla focuses on converting seaweed into natural film packaging, the American company Sway has created a negative carbon material based on seaweed, and Zerocircle in India has used locally grown seaweed to create packaging materials that are not harmful to wildlife and the ocean.
Notpla's "plastic bags" made from seaweed raw materials
It has achieved almost a chaotic effect
It is not difficult to see from the key research and development directions of the finalists that the research and utilization of seaweed has become the preferred exploration direction for contemporary startups for "future materials".
A presentation by Neha Jain, founder and director of Zerocircle, explains the need for support from the fashion industry to drive these innovative solutions: "In addition to being a compostable material, seaweed is very versatile. Fashion and materials science have always had a strong symbiotic relationship, and because of this, we very much welcome the demands and challenges from the fashion industry. It will be our testing ground, a catalyst for many great possibilities, and validation from the global fashion industry will strongly push seaweed research into a new phase. ”
Zerocircle uses eco-friendly packaging made from seaweed
Compost degradation can be made within a few weeks
The efforts of these startups are not limited to the development of new materials. In the case of Lwanda Biotech, the Kenyan-based company has also incorporated improved gender equality into its vision. Faith Obange, CEO of the company, said: "If we can qualify in this competition, the first goal we hope to achieve is to recruit women along the value chain of the product, creating decent, high-paying jobs for women while increasing productivity. We expect our actions to have a trickle-down effect by helping female employees lift themselves out of poverty. (As an economic concept, the "trickle-down effect" refers to the theory that in the process of economic development, the poor, the disadvantaged groups or the poor areas are not given special preferential treatment, but the priority developed groups or regions benefit the poor classes or regions through consumption, employment, etc., to promote their development and prosperity, or that government financial subsidies can flow into the hands of small enterprises and consumers through large enterprises, so as to better promote economic growth .
Xampla's plant protein spider silk is not only safe and edible,
It can also be dissolved in water, reducing waste generation
Because of the rigorous examination of the operability and practical effects of these innovative solutions, the final results of the competition will not be officially announced until 2023. The final winners will receive a one-year materials testing grant from Nike to prepare them for formal market entry by 2025. Brands such as J. Crew and Tom Ford Beauty are also willing to provide opportunities for finalists in their supply chains to test and upgrade their solutions and methods.
The significance of the innovative plastic bag is as Tom Ford puts it: "If the oceans are polluted and at risk, then so is the planet, and so are we." These brilliant ideas and their creations will have a tremendous impact on our planet, making the Earth's environment a safer place for future generations of humanity. Hopefully, the work we will accomplish together through this competition will ultimately contribute to global change across continents, countries and industries." ”WWD
Written by Ma Xiao Thorn
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