SYNTHETIC FIBERS

There is that old saying, usually attributed to Yves Saint Laurent: “Fashion fades, style is eternal.” Literally speaking, that actually may no longer be true, especially when it comes to fast fashion. Fast-fashion brands may not design their clothing to last, but as artifacts of a particularly consumptive era, they might become an important part of the fossil record. More than 60 percent of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels, so if and when our clothing ends up in a landfill, it will not decay. As wearers, we can also make a difference by choosing and looking after our clothes more carefully, wearing them longer, having smaller wardrobes, recycling the clothes we no longer want, and thinking about alternatives to buying such as swapping or renting outfits.

ZERO WASTE

What does the future hold for recycling? Two words: zero waste. Or to be more explicit, the future of recycling will be a closed-loop system where all discarded materials become resources for others to use. The growing population and the rising standard of living around the world will continue to put increasing demand on the finite resources of our planet. Zero waste is a goal that we must achieve. Is a zero-waste society actually possible? Mother Nature has operated on a zero-waste basis for billions of years, surely humans can as well, but as to how, well now there’s the rub. The vision is clear, and as more and more people, companies, communities, and public agencies commit themselves to it, their concept of waste changes. It is no longer waste, it is now a commodity with value, and as such, how it is collected and processed is changing. The focus is on developing strategies and innovations that will recover the highest possible value from the waste stream. 

GARMENT’S PRICE

The drop in garment prices over the last 20 years has allowed us to buy more and more clothes. We now have 5 times more clothes than our grandparents had. It felt great until we found out what was hiding behind this trend. In reality, this continuous accumulation of cheap garments is only possible because of a constant reduction of production costs. This, in turn, has serious consequences on our health, our planet, and garment workers’ lives. The fashion industry is the second-largest polluter in the world just after the oil industry. And the environmental damage is increasing as the industry grows. However, there are solutions and alternatives to mitigate these problems. The first step lies in building awareness and willingness to change.

WOOL PRODUCTION

At every stage of production, from breeding sheep to mothproofing garments, the wool industry threatens the land, air, and water. The production of sheep’s wool is more polluting – for cradle-to-gate environmental impact per kilogram of material – than that of acrylic, polyester, spandex, and rayon fibers. As with other forms of animal agriculture, raising sheep for wool gobbles up precious resources. The land is cleared and trees are cut down to make room for grazing, leading to increased soil salinity and erosion and a decrease in biodiversity. Sheep, like cows, release enormous amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere. Manure generated by farmed animals – including in countries like Australia and New Zealand, where vast flocks of sheep have been expanded to meet the world’s demand for wool –has significantly contributed to the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases over the last 250 years. On top of the horrendous environmental impact of wool, sheep suffer terribly in the industry. On top of the horrendous environmental impact of wool, sheep suffer terribly in the industry.  PETA has released video exposés recorded at nearly 100 facilities on four continents revealing that sheep are mutilated, abused, and skinned alive. Industry initiatives like the “Responsible Wool Standard” haven’t reduced or stopped the egregious suffering of sheep the world over. Consumers who are worried about the carbon footprint and sustainability of synthetic materials have a wide variety of eco-friendly options to choose from.

APPAREL INDUSTRY

The apparel industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. The global fashion industry is generating a lot of greenhouse gases due to the energy used during its production, manufacturing, and transportation of the million garments purchased each year. The soil is a fundamental element of our ecosystem. We need healthy soil for food production but also to absorb CO2.  The massive, global degradation of soil is one of the main environmental issues our planet is currently facing. It presents a major threat to global food security and also contributes to global warming. The fashion industry plays a major part in degrading soil in different ways: overgrazing of pastures through cashmere goats and sheep raised for their wool; degradation of the soil due to massive use of chemicals to grow cotton; deforestation caused by wood-based fibers like rayon. In most of the countries in which garments are produced, untreated toxic wastewaters from textiles factories are dumped directly into the rivers. Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others. These are extremely harmful to aquatic life and the health of millions of people living by those river banks. The contamination also reaches the sea and eventually spreads around the globe. Another major source of water contamination is the use of fertilizers for cotton production, which heavily pollutes runoff waters and evaporation waters. We have known this for decades: most of our clothes are made in countries in which workers’ rights are limited or non-existent. We know that if working conditions improve in one country, companies will just move to another. We believe that we cannot expect much from the corporate world or from governments if consumers do not push for a change.

CLOSED-LOOP

Closed-loop recycling is the process by which waste is collected, recycled, and produced to make something new. Effectively, the waste does a full circle without having a negative impact on the environment. Closed-loop recycling can be defined as essential waste management for environmental protection which is a production system with a recycling process. The attention of strategy is shifting from disposing of waste to recovery and reproduction by considering the recyclable waste as potential. Compared to open-loop recycling, closed-loop recycling protects the quality loss for new products rather than the reduced functionality. Also, a closed-loop recycling system contains various benefits that reduce the engagement of original materials and protect the environment. Reapply and reproduce a system of closed-loop recycling promotes environmental sustainability and conserves natural resources. It minimizes the dumping of non-degradable waste into the natural ecosystems, maximizing the value and practicality of recycling products. Moreover, the less consumption of resources decreases the risk of harm to the environment and wildlife. It also enables material of high quality to preserve in circulation ensures that there is a demand in the environment for these varieties of materials and this strategy is applied in multiple scopes. To be specific, the system reduces the application of virgin materials, saves occupancy space for non-recyclable materials, and reduces pollution in the environment by creating materials from original resources.

WATER POLLUTION

The fashion industry is the second-largest polluter in the world just after the oil industry. And the environmental damage is increasing as the industry grows. In most of the countries in which garments are produced, untreated toxic wastewaters from textiles factories are dumped directly into the rivers. Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others. These are extremely harmful to aquatic life and the health of millions of people living by those river banks. The contamination also reaches the sea and eventually spreads around the globe. Another major source of water contamination is the use of fertilizers for cotton production, which heavily pollutes runoff waters and evaporation waters. The fashion industry is a major water consumer. A huge quantity of fresh water is used for the dyeing and finishing process for all of our clothes.  As a reference, it can take up to 200 tons of freshwater per ton of dyed fabric. Cotton needs a lot of water to grow but is usually cultivated in warm and dry areas. Up to 20,000 liters of water are needed to produce just 1kg of cotton. This generates tremendous pressure on this precious resource, already scarce, and has dramatic ecological consequences such as the desertification of the Aral Sea, where cotton production has entirely drained the water. “85 % of the daily needs in the water of the entire population of India would be covered by the water used to grow cotton in the country. 100 million people in India do not have access to drinking water.” 

TRANSFORMATION TO SUSTAINABILITY

A transformation to sustainability calls for radical and systemic societal shifts. Based on a perspective of conflict as productive, and a “conflict transformation” approach that can address the root issues of ecological conflicts and promote the emergence of alternatives. In economic growth-oriented economies, increasing ecological mal-distribution remains even more obscured than economic inequality, as well-being continues to be measured primarily in monetary terms with the use of instruments such as GDP.  Such inequalities manifest through struggles for ecological redistribution, which we may otherwise term struggles for environmental justice and ecological conflicts. Dimensions of environmental justice include the distribution of burdens of pollution and access to environmental resources, the right to participate in decision-making, and the recognition of alternate worldviews and understandings of development. In the act of claiming redistributions, these conflicts are often part of, or lead to larger gender, class, caste, and ethnic struggles, and help to move the economy into a more sustainable direction.

HAIR STRENGTH 

Hair has a strength-to-weight ratio comparable to steel. It can be stretched up to one and a half times its original length before breaking. How a strand of human hair behaves when it is deformed, or stretched? Hair behaves differently depending on how fast or slows it is stretched. The faster hair is stretched, the stronger it is. Hair consists of two main parts –  the cortex, which is made up of parallel fibrils, and the matrix, which has an amorphous structure. The matrix is sensitive to the speed at which hair is deformed, while the cortex is not. The combination of these two components is what gives hair the ability to withstand high stress and strain. When hair is stretched, its structure changes in a particular way. At the nanoscale, the cortex fibrils in the hair are each made up of thousands of coiled spiral-shaped chains of molecules called alpha helix chains. As hair is deformed, the alpha helix chains uncoil and become pleated sheet structures known as beta-sheets. This structural change allows hair to handle a large amount of deformation without breaking. This structural transformation is partially reversible. When hair is stretched under a small amount of strain, it can recover its original shape. Stretch it further, the structural transformation becomes irreversible.

HAIR AND HUMIDITY

At higher humidity levels, hair can withstand up to 70 to 80 percent deformation before breaking. Water essentially “softens” hair – it enters the matrix and breaks the sulfur bonds connecting the filaments inside a strand of hair. Hair starts to undergo permanent damage at 60 degrees. Beyond this temperature, hair breaks faster at lower stress and strain.

KERATIN WASTE

The human hair is a natural filamentous biomaterial and chemically, approximately 80% keratin protein is present in human hair. Keratins are everywhere, from being the major components of household dust to common contaminants of laboratory protein analysis. Keratin is the major structural fibrous protein belonging to the large family of structural proteins to form hair, wool, feathers, nails, and horns of many kinds of animals. Keratin wastes are considered as environmental pollutants and generated mostly from poultry farms, slaughterhouses and leather industries, and barbershops. The durability of keratins is a direct consequence of their complex architecture with extremely high molecular weight. Keratin protein is not easily degraded by pepsin, trypsin, and papain because of disulfide bonds, hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic interactions. Barber and hairstylist shops are also the most important keratin pollution sources. Human hair is considered an environmental pollutant and found as the municipal waste in the world. In the city area, it often accumulates in large amounts as solid waste and chokes the drainage systems. In rural areas, hair is thrown away in nature where it slowly decomposes over several years.

GREEN GROWTH

Endless growth is destroying the planet. We know how to stop it. Once nature was an object … whatever ethical constraints remained against possession and extraction had been removed…. The land became property. Living beings became things. Ecosystems became resources. Most people encounter the growth debate, if they encounter it at all, through the idea of “green growth.” This is a vision for our collective future based on the belief that technological advances will drastically reduce the number of raw materials needed to sustain growth—a process known as the dematerialization. The belief that green growth will save us, also known as “ecomodernism” or “eco pragmatism,” has become a trendy article of faith among elites who acknowledge climate change and the dangers of breaching ecological boundaries.

Green growth is an ecologically incoherent “fairy tale.” If this seems harsh, consider what the ecomodernist position asks us to believe. The current system requires annual growth of roughly 3 percent to avoid the shock of recession. This means doubling the size of the economy every 23 years.  The green growth position rests on the assumption that this can go on, basically forever, because innovation will “dematerialize” the economy. 

While degrowthers and those narrowly focused on rapid decarbonization have their differences, the overlap is a good place to start. Systems scientists and ecological economists have been warning for decades that degrowth is not a political decision that can be put off indefinitely, but a matter of throughput math and physics. The choice before us is the form we will allow degrowth to take—humane and controlled collective action and transformation, or chaotic civilizational tailspin, crash, and ruin.

LOCAL PRODUCTION

95% of the clothing Americans bought in the 1960s was made in the U.S. By 2008, the figure had dropped drastically to 10%. Today, Americans only make 3%. And the same is coined true for most other regions — profit-oriented Western ready-to-wear conglomerates are sailing their ship elsewhere.

Using locally produced materials has multiple advantages. It reduces the fossil fuels and associated pollutants including greenhouse gas emissions required for shipping. It supports local businesses and feeds money into the regional economy. Small-scale local production helps to eliminate the waste of unneeded products made to adhere to overseas minimums, reduce emissions and energy usage. Local production pushes for an accountable ethical production and labor, where the environmental impacts would directly affect the consumers thereby eyes cannot be closed on overseas factory pollutants and working conditions.

SHARED ECONOMY

Textile waste can be divided into pre-consumer and post-consumer waste. The pre-consumer waste is generated at factory floors during cutting, and during the manufacturing process of apparel making, and includes fabric selvages and leftover fabric scraps. Part of the waste created in the textile industry consists of fabrics and trims—including buttons, embroidery threads, and other adornments. It can be said that 10-25% of the fabric is wasted during this process. A lot of companies try to recycle fabric wastes to create accessories, jewelry, and patched one-of-a-kind garments. Although there is no way to completely eliminate the amount of waste created, it is possible to reduce it. Deadstock or damaged yardage, which is another source of hard-to-measure waste. The scrap material is being turned into material down the value chain, thus losing the value of the scraps to be used in its highest value in fabric form. In the worst case, it is ending up in the landfill or incinerator. There are some amazing programs turning denim scraps into building insulation, melting polyester or nylon scraps into new yarns, and age-old processes recycling cashmere and wool into new yarns. Yet these programs are mainly limited to fabrics that are nearly 100% of a single fiber, leaving not much else to do with the ever-popular blended fiber fabrics.

Human hair is one of the highest nitrogen-containing organic materials in nature because it is predominantly made up of proteins. In addition, human hair also contains sulfur, carbon, and 20 other elements essential for plants. In the atmosphere, hair decomposes very slowly, but moisture and keratinolytic fungi present in the soil, animal manure, and sewage sludge can degrade hair within a few months. In traditional Chinese agriculture, human hair was mixed with cattle dung to prepare compost that was applied to the fields in the winter season. In some communities in India, hair has been used directly as fertilizer for many fruit and vegetable crops and in making organic manures. Recent experiments on horticulture plants show that direct application of human hair to soil provides the necessary plant nutrients for over two to three cropping seasons.

Pre-consumer textile waste of human hair textiles can be processed into fertilizers, integrating a biomaterial to the agriculture industry, creating zero waste of the textile manufacturing process. If industries would collaborate, knowledge would be exchanged and would create a positive impact for all industries involved. Human hair textiles can connect the beauty, textile, and agriculture industries.

HAIR AND INFORMATION

The only “living” part of a hair is found in the follicle as it grows. The hair strand above the skin has no biochemical activity and so is considered “dead”.

Hair contains information about everything that has been in somebody’s bloodstream, such as medicine, drugs, minerals, and vitamins. Alone, without follicle cells attached, it cannot be used to identify a specific individual. In the best case, an investigator can identify a group or class of people who share similar traits who might share a certain type of hair. Gender also cannot be identified from hair. Men’s hair and women’s hair are identical in structure.

DNA is contained in blood, semen, skin cells, tissue, organs, muscle, brain cells, bone, teeth, hair, saliva, mucus, perspiration, fingernails, urine, feces, etc. DNA can be collected from virtually anywhere. Shed hair has no nuclear DNA. Nuclear DNA comes from the cell nucleus and is inherited from both parents, half from the mother and half from the father. Each person’s nuclear DNA is unique — except for identical twins, who have the same DNA. The hair follicle at the base of human hair contains cellular material rich in DNA. In order to be used for DNA analysis, the hair must have been pulled from the body – hairs that have been broken off or cut off do not contain Nuclear DNA. Therefore hair that has been cut off by a barber or hairdresser does not contain any Nuclear DNA.

ECOCENTRISM

Anthropocentrism, philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. Anthropocentrism is considered to be profoundly embedded in many modern human cultures and conscious acts. It is a major concept in the field of environmental ethics and environmental philosophy, where it is often considered to be the root cause of problems created by human action within the ecosphere.

Ecocentrism is a term used in ecological political philosophy to denote a nature-centered, as opposed to human-centered system of values. 

To switch Western culture from its present track to a saving ecopolitical route means finding a new and compelling belief system to redirect our way of living. It seems to me that the only promising universal belief system is ecocentrism, defined as a value shift from Homo sapiens to planet earth. A scientific rationale backs the value shift. All organisms are evolved from Earth, sustained by Earth. Thus Earth, not an organism, is the metaphor for Life. Earth, not humanity is the Life-center, the creativity-center. Earth is the whole of which we are subservient parts. Such a fundamental philosophy gives ecological awareness and sensitivity an enfolding, material focus. Ecocentrism is not an argument that all organisms have equivalent value. It is not an anti-human argument nor a put-down of those seeking social justice. It does not deny that myriad important homocentric problems exist. But it stands aside from these smaller, short-term issues in order to consider Ecological Reality. Reflecting on the ecological status of all organisms, it comprehends the Ecosphere as a Being that transcends in importance any one single species, even the self-named sapient one.

We are part of the ecosystem and not above it, it is time to contribute. Are you ready to become material for a more sustainable future?

CITIES AS FARMS

By 2050, nearly 10 billion people will share our planet. As global climate change worsens and the population expands, humanity must produce more food in the next 50 years than it has in the past 10,000. With more mouths to feed and limited land to farm, we’re at an agricultural impasse.
The soil is a fundamental element of our ecosystem. We need healthy soil for food production but also to absorb CO2. The massive, global degradation of soil is one of the main environmental issues our planet is currently facing. It presents a major threat to global food security and also contributes to global warming.
The fashion industry plays a major part in degrading soil in different ways: overgrazing of pastures through cashmere goats and sheep raised for their wool; degradation of the soil due to massive use of chemicals to grow cotton; deforestation caused by wood-based fibers like rayon.

Cities as farms, waste as material. How can we stop the soil degradation? There is only one way to do it and it is by changing our entire production system and the materials we use. The solution? -Use fibers like human hair, human hair is in the hands of individuals until it is cut and collected as a raw material. Are we really this arrogant? – that we cannot accept our waste as a material for a sustainable future? Human hair is the future fiber.

AFFORDABLE SUSTAINABILITY

What constitutes a sustainable textile?
Four main factors: raw material extraction, textile production, added chemistry and end-of-life.

Sustainable fabrics often come from plants and animals. Just like food crops, these natural resources are farmed and cost more than synthetic materials that are made of chemicals. Ethical materials must also be farmed in sustainable manners for example disposing of waste water properly and limiting the use of pesticides, it involves paying farmers and weavers a fair price. All these factors combined make sustainable fabrics very expensive.
Although many claim that sustainable fashion can be had by all, realistically it can be prohibitively expensive. The base costs that go into sustainable fashion are inherently more expensive due to sourcing costly eco-friendly natural materials and paying people a fair wage for sewing garments. High base costs compounded with retail markups make sustainable fashion inaccessible.

Textiles woven from waste human hair can give accessibility to an affordable product without compromising on the carbon footprint. Our waste becomes the raw material without using land and degrading soil, due to the cleanness of the material water is not required for its processing, lowering the water usage within the textile industry. Local materials means cutting on transport costs and closely monitoring ethical labour and fair working conditions to local laws. Treating human hair as any other fiber can offer a sustainable and economically beneficial product that makes sustainable choices affordable for everyone.