Research in the field of biodegradable materials shows promise to revolutionize the current fashion world. The dominant practice of immediately turning runway prototypes to intensely manufacture goods is an extreme threat to our environment’s future. The concept, commonly known as “fast fashion“, is one which requires vast quantities of clothing to be made for commercial purchase as quick as possible. This forces overproduction, where large corporations shoot individual purchase prices way down to tempt the consumer to buy clothes based on how little they cost. Making enormous quantities of clothes is necessary to make each trend profitable, but it is very destructive. Overproducing clothes requires huge amounts of energy, which uses fossil fuels and water, and results in a massive increase in land-fill waste, once the cheap clothes are out of style or can no longer serve their use. Today nine percent of the municipal solid waste in our landfills are clothing material according Scientific American. This issue of a rapid influx of new waste to landfills is compounded because the cheap materials used to make the clothes, traditionally plastic-based acrylics, are not biodegradable.
New research has proven that it is possible to bioengineer materials from organisms such as bacteria, yeast, algae animal cells, and fungi, which leads us to believe there is a hopeful solution to the multitude of issues caused by “fast fashion’s” need for rapid overproduction. One professor’s work from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Theanne Schiros is described in great detailed. She mainly works with algae for the production of her material. Her award-winning team, AlgalKit, has created a yarn-like substance by removing alginate, a polysaccharide in kelp, and making a water based gel, which is then died by non-chemical pigments, and is then dried to produce a colored fibrous material which is then woven into fabric. One of the large benefits from this process, as professor Schiros elaborates, is that these gels can be grown to fit molds, ultimately eliminating the massive amount of unused waste material that results from the hasty overproduction in today’s textile factories. Schiros also explains that her material is strong and flexible, which are two major criteria in choosing material to be mass-produced. In addition Schiros has looked into the possibility of synthesizing dyes for the material from bioengineered bacteria, which could supplant the use of toxic dyes normally tested on animals. Addressing both the issues of wasted resources, like energy, water, and material, and the growing problem of clogged landfills with non-biodegradable materials, algal-based fabrics in clothing shows great promise in changing the fashion industry for the betterment of our environment.