Artists gathered in New York City earlier this month for the Met Gala, one of the biggest and most expensive clothing shows of the year. This time, the dress code was nature- oriented, instructing visitors to dress for” The Garden of Time”.
As you can see, some attendees showed up wearing floral designs or garlands of linen roses. Engineers and designers are developing fabrics that make it possible for people to wear fungus, a plant that actually grows in gardens, outside the gala.
A small number of businesses and startups are now developing and selling elements made almost entirely of the living cells found in fungi, which produce fabrics remarkably similar to leather. In an effort to address the colossal waste matter in the fashion industry, people are experimenting with orange peel materials, algae, and aggressive lionfish epidermis to create fabrics.
Recently, a variety of media reports have touted this pattern as the next big thing in style. However, these headlines appeared eerily similar to those I saw four years ago, which said mushroom fabrics were “fall’s hottest trend trend.” I was left wondering if vegan, recyclable clothing is actually gaining popularity, or if it will take them to a level that will significantly reduce style waste.
For today’s publication, I am exploring the potential for compostable materials to alleviate waste—and why they may overlook the “root trigger” of fashion’s economic issues.
Fashion’s Tacky Issues: At this point, it’s no solution that the fashion industry has a spare issue. An estimated 92 million plenty of clothing and textiles are discarded annually, many of which are precise mountains of cloth in developing nations like Chile and Ghana. Almost 80 percent of the world’s grain production is made up of nylon and cotton, and clothing is frequently made of plastic derivatives that are difficult to break down naturally.
Serious documentaries have examined the devastating effects of “fast fashion” on the environment and ethics, from widespread slave labor to widespread water use. Animal rights activists have long raised questions about the moral ramifications of producing set, which primarily comes from cows or other animals ‘ masks. According to the UN, the clothes industry contributes 10 % of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to its supply chain and manufacturing.
Some environmentalists claimed that the Met Gala’s nature-centric style failed to address this significant environmental impact, and that it may have actually raised some of the biggest issues in fashion.
One dress is produced using excessive amounts of water, chemicals, and raw materials, and major emissions are produced at every stage of production, from dyeing to running to cutting and sewing, according to Michelle Gabriel, Glasgow Caledonian New York College’s grad program director of sustainable fashion.
People have significantly pushed for more sustainability in the fabrics and clothing they wear as these problems have become public, giving businesses and startups the motivation to look into new materials like mushrooms that have less of an environmental footprint.
Recyclable materials have a variety of enhancement processes, depending on the type of material. At the biotech firm MycoWorks, workers lay out “deep- food, lasagna- like trays” of fermenting mushroom in a big factory, the company’s founder Phil Ross told National Geographic. That, the cells sit on agricultural waste and hatch, until they are peeled off, shaped, cooked and tanned into a leather- like fabric.
Using lemon peels or cactuses, another processes can produce similar-looking materials. But, these “vegan garments” are not always totally natural because many are sealed in a layer of plastic called polyester, reports the Guardian.
Is Fungus Fashion Truly Trending? In 2021, style models Stella McCartney, Hermès and Adidas each released items, from footwear to totes, made using fruit materials. A number of other businesses have since begun producing materials using things like restrictive species skin, algae, and other bio-based materials.
But at the time,” there’s a lot of attention, I would say, more than uptake”, Monica Buchan- Ng, the head of knowledge exchange at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, based at London College of Fashion, told me. ” It can be kind of a bit of a match of chicken”, in which companies are willing to invest in a pilot project, but not yet prepared to spend thousands on a single option, she added.
Without that increased investment, some companies in the eco- pleasant textile space have buckled, including Renewcell, a startup that aimed to turn ancient clothes into pulp for fresh materials. Similarly, materials company Bolt Threads announced last year that it was halting production of its mushroom leather, Mylo.
We have paused Mylo to review what works and what wo n’t work in the future, according to Bolt Threads CEO Dan Widmaier, who spoke to Vogue Business.” We are not immune to the same macroeconomic pressures that everyone else is facing. He continued, noting that because more money has been given to artificial intelligence in the fashion industry, a trend that Buchan- Ng also mentioned, is difficult to raise money for new material development.
Bolt Threads hopes to restart its mushroom-producing process one day. In addition, a number of other companies have received millions of dollars in seed funding to continue developing their own bio-based fabrics, as MycoWorks announced in January that their first 1, 000 sheets of fine mycelium were going to be produced.
However, it’s not clear whether they will be able to significantly reduce fashion waste. And Buchan- Ng said that they fail to get at the “root causes of fashion devastation”: overproduction.
” I genuinely believe that the biggest solution is n’t the simple one because it’s the one that requires these large fashion companies to make significantly less money,” he said. She said it’s just to make less money, to pay more for that money, and to look after what we have. ” We still need these amazing materials. But we just need fewer of them with less fashion overall, essentially—and I say that as a person that genuinely loves clothes”.
More Top Climate News
As climate change worsens, heat waves could increasingly affect those who are most vulnerable to them: seniors.
According to a new study, more than 200 million older people worldwide will be regularly exposed to chronic and acute heat by 2050, given the current state of the world’s climate. Body parts age more slowly, which is the key to reducing body temperature during a heat wave. Under severe circumstances, heat stress can lead to exhaustion and potentially fatal blood clots, reports NPR.
According to a different new study, extreme heat produced by climate change may also be worsening brain diseases. The brain can struggle to function in high temperatures, which can exacerbate symptoms of Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, the researchers found.
Meanwhile, southern Brazil is still reeling from the flooding that inundated the region over the past few weeks, which killed at least 149 people, reports the Associated Press. Many farm animals were drowned in the water, though rescue teams are still looking for those who might have survived the floods.
Kiley Price
Reporter
Kiley Price is a reporter at Inside Climate News, with a particular interest in wildlife, ocean health, food systems and climate change. She writes ICN’s” Today’s Climate” newsletter, which covers the most pressing environmental news each week.
She earned her master’s degree in science journalism at New York University, and her bachelor’s degree in biology at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. She was a former Pulitzer Reporting Fellow while she covered the intersections of Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement for a month in Thailand.