Using data from the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Textile Exchange, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has estimated that emissions from the garment industry will be 1,025 gigatons of CO2e in 2019, or 2% of global emissions. On Forbes, fashion insider Brooke Roberts-Islam presents an overview of next-generation materials to reduce the environmental impact of textile and leather.
The media is full of “sustainable” materials and rental and resale options, but how sustainable are they? What difference do they actually make? And why, despite these efforts, is the planet heading even faster towards climate catastrophe, as demonstrated by the IPCC’s 6th report?
Using data from the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Textile Exchange, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has estimated that emissions from the garment industry will be 1,025 gigatons of CO2e in 2019, or 2% of global emissions. It is therefore expected to increase by 64% to 1,588 Gt by 2030. At the same time, the industry aims to reduce absolute emissions by 45% to limit warming to 1.5°C.
Global life cycle data shows that the biggest emissions (and other environmental impacts) of fashion are found at the material stages of the supply chain. The aforementioned WRI report presents six critical levers for reducing emissions in the sector. The first three concern material efficiency, sustainability, and innovation; the other three address energy efficiency, abandoning coal and using 100% renewable energy.
The WRI report urges to “strengthen investment in next-generation materials, including fabric recycling, bio-based materials and plant-based leather substitutes.”
The materials science landscape has emerged rapidly in recent times, with major IPOs and brands investing in textile startups, thus entering the race to secure supply. Following last year’s developments, including Allbirds investing in welding natural fibers, H&M at Spinnova, and Spinnova with Ecco shoe factory, the brands are set to expand their partnerships with material innovators as some exciting innovations begin to grow.
Looking to the future, companies that offer new generation alternatives to cotton and MMCF and that reduce the impact of leather tannery waste emerge. But first, what is the size of the cotton market and the MMCF and what are the sustainability issues?
Alternatives to cotton and man-made cellulosic fibers (MMCF)
Cotton accounts for 24% of the global fiber market (after polyester). In 2020, world cotton production was 26 million tons. MMCF (including viscose, acetate and lyocell) account for 6%.
Cotton is grown industrially in 75 countries around the world, and MMCF is usually made from wood pulp, some from forests planted for this purpose, others from endangered forests, thus damaging fragile habitats and local communities.
Demand for both types of fiber is expected to increase year by year, despite land boundaries limiting their feasible production volumes. The main building block of both cotton and MMCF is cellulose, but it is the way they are processed that differs.
Cotton is transformed into fibers from the fluff collected by cotton plants, where MMCF is reconstructed by the dissolution of wood pulp by a chemical process, earning it the name “regenerated fibers”. Both fibers are used to make yarns and fabrics with different characteristics. Cotton tends to look more textured and “natural,” while MMFFs, including viscose, are silkier and more draped. However, innovators creating next-generation MMFCs are fine-tuning their fibers to behave more like cotton, making them a viable alternative to virgin cotton to alleviate the planetary limitations of industrial agriculture.
So, which companies are making progress and how much of the global demand for fiber can they provide, by when?
Spinnova
Based in Finland, Spinnova has developed a revolutionary technology to produce cellulosic textile fibers from wood or waste, such as leather, fabric, or food waste, without harmful chemicals. The factory runs on renewable energy, the wood pulp is FSC certified and shipped by their raw material partner, Suzano, and no chemical solvents are used to create the fibers, thus avoiding the need for wastewater treatment and the associated impacts.
Spinnova’s elimination of chemical solvents during the “wet spinning” of fibers offers such a revolutionary impact reduction that Lenzing (one of the world’s largest MMCF manufacturers) has invested in Spinnova since the beginning. After their IPO in 2021, Spinnova’s new “Woodspin” production facility is under construction and is expected to be completed this year. It will run 100% on renewable energy and recovered thermal energy, transferring excess energy to the district heating network.
“Thanks to our clean production method, we don’t need an environmental permit,” explained CEO and founder Janne Poranen in a recent update of the company.
The company has not yet disclosed a life cycle analysis (LCA) of the cradle-to-gate impact of its fiber “because it’s the pre-commercial phase,” but a preliminary third-party comparison conducted by Simreka concluded a CO2e footprint of 64.5% less than conventional cotton.
Infinite Fiber
Infinited Fiber Company (IFC), also based in Finland, can turn paper, cardboard, fabric and agricultural waste into pulp that then becomes “cotton-like” fibers. The fibers can be used in a wide range of fabrics, fabrics and nonwovens, from jeans to t-shirts and wipes. Their technology includes patented processes for both the creation of waste pulp and for “wet spinning” in “Infinna TM” fibers.
When spinning fibers, IFC uses urea (a natural and safe compound) and water to transform waste pulp into Infinna TM fibers . Like Spinnova, their process avoids the chemical solvent carbon disulfide which is typically used in the production of MMCF and known to be neurotoxic. However, the approaches differ in fiber processing: Spinnova is based on machining while IFC is based on chemical processing (albeit with “green” chemicals).
A further differentiation is that Spinnova receives wood pulp while IFC creates its own pulp from textile waste (their “first generation” waste stream, followed by second-generation paper and third-generation wheat and straw).
IFC’s brand partners include H&M and Wrangler and are leading a three-year initiative to develop a circular supply chain in Europe called the New Cotton Project. In 2021 they raised 30 million euros of investments from BESTSELLER and adidas, and CEO Petri Alava explained during a telephone interview that “the demand (for fiber) of the brands is 5 times the capacity of our (new) structure”. They currently operate a pilot fiber production plant for research and development and small-scale production, with fluctuating volumes to balance the demand of their brand partners and the continuous development of fibers.
What are the environmental benefits of Infinna™? An LCA based on the operations of the new plant is underway, which is expected to be completed in 2024. The plant will run on 100% renewable energy, with very low energy and water consumption compared to the traditional MMCF, a deduction made by Alava on the observed differences in the processes. In addition, the use of waste raw materials instead of virgin wood further reduces impacts, he says.
What will be the capacity of the fiber? The factory will produce 30,000 tons per year (a tiny fraction of a percentage of the global cotton market); but the company’s long-term strategy is to license the technology to fiber manufacturers and textile manufacturers, and that’s where vast scalability potential lies. “We don’t want to be a bottleneck in the industry,” Alava said, about abandoning the unsustainable use of virgin raw materials and dependence on cotton.
Renew
Renewcell, based in neighboring Sweden, is leveraging the local infrastructure of a declining paper industry, turning an abandoned paper mill into a textile pulp factory.
Renewcell uses 100% textile waste to produce recycled pulp which is a direct substitute for the wood pulp currently used by textile manufacturers. This is the key point of the company’s difference: they provide a 100% recycled textile dissolution paste for MMCF fiber manufacturers, a “plug and play” paste for the circular production of viscose.
During an interview with CEO Patrik Lundström, he explained “Renewcell aims to collaborate with IFC and Spinnova rather than compete with them. “This is because Renewcell’s recycled pulp, combined with Ifc and Spinnova’s solvent-free fiber processing, offers a lower cumulative impact fiber, compared to traditional MMCF, a double victory in the sustainability stakes.
Lundström defines IFC and Spinnova as critical innovators who push the boundaries of fiber and fabric characteristics and performance to create “cotton-like qualities, while Renewcell focuses on providing them (and others) with circular pulp.” We achieved 7 times recycling during testing without loss of quality,” says Lundström of their process, which involves working with fiber manufacturers to make their viscose material ‘Circulose ®’.
What are the environmental benefits? Impact assessment has been difficult due to non-standardised methods of assessing the intrinsic impacts of waste materials. Comparing incumbent MMCF processes also proved difficult, as demonstrated by this summary commissioned by Stella McCartney in 2017, which led to a “net negative” impact score for Circulose ®. Chief Growth Officer, Harald Cavalli-Bjorkman, explained in an interview that Renewcell is undergoing an in-depth LCA analysis, drawing on primary data related to waste streams and suppliers, rather than using secondary data. They aim to provide raw data to industry stakeholders to fit into their preferred impact assessment tool, “regardless of whether it’s the Higg index or any other environmental management system,” according to Cavalli-Bjorkman.
But what is their volume in the global fiber market? Renewcell’s current capacity is 60,000 tons per year, with an expansion to 360,000 tons per year by 2025 (anticipated from 2030, due to increased demand from brands). In 2020, viscose production was 5.2 million tons, and demand is expected to increase. By 2030 Renewcell could provide about 7% of global demand for viscose fibers, with ample room for circular pulp expansion to replace virgin wood pulp.
Pitfalls of comparing material impacts
We tend to try to compare the solutions of materials in search of the “most sustainable”, but we ask ourselves questions such as: what is the impact of waste compared to wood pulp? Which spinning method consumes less energy and less water? What is the chemical footprint reduction for “solvent-free” fibers? drive us along a murky road. These fibers are pre-commercial and evolving, so those questions are largely academic at this point.
What we do know is that the removal of solvents, the use of most renewable energy, the minimal extraction of blue water and the use of waste raw materials relieve the pressure on industrial cotton crops and the consequences that accompany it. This is probably enough evidence to tell us that these solutions deserve further investment, development and scaling.
Lundstrom himself said: “We need more innovators, more companies in this area, to meet market demands for low-impact (fiber) solutions.” And with Spinnova and IFC reaching about 4-5% of world cotton demand (based on 2020 data) in about 10 years, there is plenty of room for expansion.
At current rates, the growth of the global fiber market – 109 million tons (MT) in 2020, which will rise to 146 million tons by 2030 – will exceed the ability of companies such as Spinnova and IFC to provide alternatives to low-impact cotton fiber. It should be noted that there are other next-generation materials companies working in this space, including EVRNU (with their NuCycl material) and others, but as part of this I have attempted to convey capabilities based on selected companies that publicly announce aggressive growth plans. To this would ideally be added the recycling capacity of cotton by companies including Recover.
On the MMCF front, Renewcell’s capacity will be around 7% of viscose demand by 2030 (based on 2020 market data), so there is plenty of room for the expansion of circular paste solutions as well.
Reduction of Leather impact
In a joint venture with Ecco Leather and wet blue, crust and split supplier KT Trading, Spinnova launched Respin last year. Respin consists of taking the fiber from the leather waste to spin the thread which can then be woven or knitted.
All three partners are now working on commercializing the material, using a technique that Spinnova has used with other fibers since its launch in 2014. His technique is based on fiber suspension flows, mechanically splitting the fibers and controlling the flow in this way as forming a thread. After going through a drying process, the yarn is ready for spinning.
The Respin joint venture will pay a total of €2.5 million to Spinnova for the pilot production line and research and development services during this proof-of-concept phase, which is expected to last a year.
