The 10 newest sustainable materials for your trendy clothing

Antonio Salituro
4 min readJul 22, 2021

--

colourful dye powders
Image source

Do you wanna wear cool clothes while being eco-friendly?

First, we’ve got to put the breaks on fast fashion sustainability issues

How?

Simple. We need to use more sustainable clothing materials!

Textile production may account for up to 60% of total CO2 emissions by 2030.

But we’re still in time to stop this!

Environmentally sound textiles companies have sprung up over the last years, offering eco-conscious alternatives for sustainable fashion brands.

Let’s run through the most trailblazing sustainable fashion materials currently on the market, including examples of natural fabrics, circular economy product ideas and much more!

Contents

1) Mushroom textiles

2) Hemp fabrics

3) Water-friendly organic cotton

4) Carbon negative polyester

5) Recycled polyester

6) Greener dyes

7) TencelTM fibers

8) Renewable cellulose

9) The upcyclable fiber

10) Circular fibers

Conclusions

1) Mushroom textiles

No hallucinations, you read that right!

Mushrooms are kind of magic as they are used for literally anything, including high end vegan clothing!

Neffa picked up this fungal trend by mixing compostable mushroom roots (Mycelium) with other textiles to form their myco-fashion product, a.k.a. MycoTex.

Besides being a natural raw material, Mycelium has got good insulating and moisture-absorbing properties, which many textiles lack. That’s why mushrooms are the kings of sustainable fashion materials.

The harvest of this eco-friendly creation will optimise the garments manufacturing process, thus reducing the amount of clothing waste in landfills.

2) Hemp fabrics

Hemp is another multipurpose gift of mother nature.

It doesn’t require chemicals to grow and rapidly regenerates itself, thus representing a perfect example of what a sustainable fabric is.

Thanks to its strength and durability, hemp is an organic source for making long-lasting fabrics.

an hemp field
Image source

But is hemp fabric biodegradable as well?

Sure! It’s a type of biomass and one of the best sustainable clothing materials we could use. That’s because once the hemp-containing clothes have reached their end of life, the hemp fibers will have no lasting impact on the environment.

We could say “Hemp Makes It Better”, as Bear Fiber’s motto suggests.

This US pioneer in using hemp for clothing made the first American hemp-based socks ever. This company is also supporting local farmers, which are growing hemp for textiles.

3) Water-friendly organic cotton

First, what is the difference between organic and nonorganic cotton?

To be organic, cotton should be farmed without spraying any chemicals (pesticides and fertilisers) on crops.

Anyway, there’s another major issue with cotton: It requires water galore to grow.

In “clothing terms”, 2,700 litres for a single T-shirt!

And this is a huge problem as we’re running out of water due to climate change!

That’s why cotton (especially the non-organic one) can’t be included in the list of sustainable materials for our clothing.

Luckily, companies like hydroCotton (now called Materra) are testing the water to find a more eco-friendly option.

farmers harvesting cotton in a field
Image source

This London-based startup is growing organic cotton using 80% less water and emitting 30% less CO₂ compared to conventional cotton farming.

How have they achieved that?

They water the cotton plants at their roots, thus maximising absorption, and recover any loss.

After conducting an initial pilot, Materra is currently up-scaling their farm in Gujarat (India) to supply water-friendly organic cotton to fashion brands.

4) Carbon negative polyester

Polyester is a synthetic fiber (plastic) present in 60% of our clothing and has become the symbol of the fast fashion industry.

Due to how polyester is produced, its global demand is responsible for nearly 70 million barrels of oil burned each year, thus adding to the environmental impact of fossil fuels.

But Fairbrics is coming to the rescue!

This company made a carbon negative polyester by upcycling CO2.

How does it work?

infographic on how to make carbon negative polyester
Image source

5) Recycled polyester

Is polyester recyclable?

It seems so based on what PHOENXT is doing.

This sustainable textile brand is reducing carbon emissions from plastic production with an advanced system that recycles polyester from used textiles and converts it into new fibers.

The company says their separation technology could save 22.2 million tonne of waste polyester.

Plus, their polyester recycling process emits 30% less CO2 compared to virgin polyester production.

Check the full article to unveil 5 more sustainable fashion materials

--

--

Antonio Salituro
Antonio Salituro

Written by Antonio Salituro

I’m a blogger and creative writer who specializes in environmental sustainability themes such as climate change solutions and circular economy innovations

No responses yet