We are living on this planet long enough, taking its resources, but what are we giving back in exchange? Human Material Loop researches the concept of humans as a sustainable material of the future and proposes an alternative material to integrate into our daily products. Hair has been playing an important role in our lives, from defining our identity it also shows the religion we associate with or the political ideology we believe in.
The most common interest in hair is focused on hair growth, hair types, and hair care, but hair is also an important biomaterial primarily composed of protein, notably keratin. With the increase of global energy crisis and ecology risk, the unique advantages of biological fibers such as human hair are not yet implemented in our product cycles. Human hair and its abundance quantity, non-toxic, non-irritation of the skin, high tensile strength, lightweight, thermal insulator, flexibility, and oil-absorbing capability as a material show a great potential integrating it into our production system.
In Europe 72 million kg of human hair, waste ends up in landfills or in the drainage system causing several problems. Human Material Loop integrates human hair into our textile production, lowers the demand for cotton and exchanges synthetic fibers for natural ones, and creates impact by integrating a local, biodegradable fiber into our textile industry.
How does the textile industry operate today? What can we change about it? We are aware of the problems, the solution is on our heads.
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.
Curious to know more about hair? Ongoing research throughout human history is bringing together some facts and matters that concern hair. Click here and learn more about human hair.
We are living on this planet long enough, taking its resources, but what are we giving back in exchange? Human Material Loop researches the concept of humans as a sustainable material of the future and proposes an alternative material to integrate into our daily products. Hair has been playing an important role in our lives, from defining our identity it also shows the religion we associate with or the political ideology we believe in.
The most common interest in hair is focused on hair growth, hair types, and hair care, but hair is also an important biomaterial primarily composed of protein, notably keratin. With the increase of global energy crisis and ecology risk, the unique advantages of biological fibers such as human hair are not yet implemented in our product cycles. Human hair and its abundance quantity, non-toxic, non-irritation of the skin, high tensile strength, lightweight, thermal insulator, flexibility, and oil-absorbing capability as a material show a great potential integrating it into our production system.
In Europe 72 million kg of human hair, waste ends up in landfills or in the drainage system causing several problems. Human Material Loop integrates human hair into our textile production, lowers the demand for cotton and exchanges synthetic fibers for natural ones, and creates impact by integrating a local, biodegradable fiber into our textile industry.
How does the textile industry operate today? What can we change about it? We are aware of the problems, the solution is on our heads.
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.
Curious to know more about hair? Ongoing research throughout human history is bringing together some facts and matters that concern hair. Click here and learn more about human hair.