Goodbye microplastics: In the first part of our special feature on circular materials, we focus on bio-based fibres, yarns and fabrics for fashion and interiors, which are seen as promising alternatives to organic cotton and linen.
by Markus Hieke
Creatives, brands and manufacturers have long been in a race of sorts to find high-performance materials that are independent of petrochemicals. Dubious recycling promises and the risks posed by microplastics have brought the synthetic textile industry and single-use plastic products under fire. Now it is not just the European Union that is pushing for change. Measures such as the Single-Use Plastics Directive and the new ‘Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation’ (ESPR) have been introduced. According to the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt), consumers are also increasingly concerned about the environmental footprint of the goods they buy.
A Network for Green Material Innovation
Designers play a central role in this. A lobby is forming around them, visible in networks such as Biofabricate in Paris, on platforms such as the Future Materials Bank, and through labels such as the Econogy label at Frankfurt’s leading Heimtextil and Techtextil fairs. Innovative materials research is a feature of almost every European design festival – from the Salone del Mobile in Milan to 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen and the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. University projects and start-up ideas are producing market-ready solutions that are waiting to transform the industry. The industry needs to act to remain competitive in a sustainable future.
The conditions for this could hardly be better: even today, manufacturers can either draw on a growing pool of market-ready material alternatives or support their own brand-building initiatives. A pioneer in textile innovation is the Swiss company Bananatex®. It produces strong and easily compostable fabrics from the trunks of the Abacá banana plant. This is grown in the Philippines, an island nation that is already feeling the effects of climate change. By following permaculture principles, there is no need for pesticides, fertilisers or artificial water supplies. Because abacá is difficult to spin, Bananatex uses the intermediate step of papermaking and then spins the delicately split webs into high performance yarn. The textile is used not only for the company’s own bag brand Qwstion, but also in collaborations with brands such as Stella McCartney, COS, Balenciaga and Swiss furniture manufacturer Lehni.
London-based Ananas Anam follows a similar path with its Piñayarn® and Piñatex® products, which use a by-product of fruit growing. Fibres from pineapple leaves are either spun into yarn (Piñayarn) or compressed into the leather-like non-woven material Piñatex. Piñatex is used in footwear, accessories and interiors, with a top layer of bio-based polyurethane, which limits its full compostability. Nevertheless, it is considered a milestone in material development, not only offering sustainable alternatives, but also benefiting farmers in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Côte d’Ivoire by generating additional income from their crops.
Foraged Fibers von Iines Jakovlev, Aalto University | Foto: iines_Jakovlev
Foraged Fibers von Iines Jakovlev, Aalto University, Foto: Bryan Saragosa
Bio-Based From the Lab
Some solutions can literally be found by the side of the road, as Iines Jakovlev shows with her project Foraged Fibers, which she recently presented at Dutch Design Week. Jakovlev experimented with plant fibres from willow herbs, dandelions and reeds. She extracted bast, leaf and seed fibres by tearing, soaking and cooking them to create different yarns and textile patterns. Her workplace, the Bioinnovation Centre at Aalto University in Espoo, near Helsinki, is an interdisciplinary laboratory dedicated to researching biological and circular solutions. Krista Virtanen and Saskia Helinska, for example, are taking an equally innovative approach. With The Root, they experimented with wheatgrass root fibres, a by-product of vertical farming, and used them to create textile fabrics. With Shimmering Wood, Noora Yau and Konrad Klockars developed shimmering sequins made of wood. The shimmering effect is created by a layer of nanocellulose. Doctoral student Sofía Guridi is investigating whether control instruments such as computer keyboards can be made from sustainable, biodegradable materials such as wood cellulose. A few years ago, Guridi’s Light Tissue project opened up new aesthetic and functional possibilities by integrating translucent elements made of synthetic cellulose into clothing.
The use of supposedly inferior raw materials is also a focus for textile and material designers. In their project (Un)woven, Sarmīte Poļakova and Māra Bērziņa from Studio Sarmīte in Frankfurt am Main investigate how post-consumer and post-industrial fibres, which are usually recycled into purely functional nonwovens, can be transformed into aesthetically pleasing textiles. Their approach combines a specially developed process with a biodegradable binder. The result is materials with a paper-like texture that can be recycled again and again.
For their thesis entitled Urban Fibers, Tau Pibernat and Vera Castelijns, graduates of the Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin and finalists of the 2024 German Design Graduates, have found a way to reprocess discarded jersey cotton garments without degrading the quality of the fibres, as is currently the case in industrial textile recycling processes. The duo transform the recovered resource into yarns that are optimised for processing on knitting, weaving and roping machines, making them suitable for use in high-end home and fashion textiles. The linear production scheme from fibre to landfill would be broken.
Colours From Nature
In her bachelor’s thesis Raw, Rare & Resilient, design graduate Zora Weidkuhn from Lucerne, Switzerland, explores the question of how high-quality upholstery fabrics can be made from pure, undyed sheep’s wool. Once an important raw material, it has been increasingly forgotten due to the spread of synthetic fibres and cheap imported merino wool. The number of sheep in Switzerland is steadily decreasing. At best, they produce meat sheep with inferior quality wool,’ explains Weidkuhn. This wool is mostly used to make fleece for construction or gardening. With her work, Weidkuhn wants to revive the importance of this raw material. She used the natural colour palette of white, brown and black to demonstrate the diversity of this traditional fibre in 432 woven design variations.
Michelle Müller, a finalist in the German Design Graduates 2024, takes a different approach to raw wool. The Master’s graduate from the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin has identified great potential in the bounce of the fibres as an upholstery material, which could reduce the use of foams. With Mono Wool, she has also developed a cover that is produced in one piece using a 3D knitting process, then filled and moulded into a seat shell using a folding principle.
The challenge remains to achieve a variety of colours using natural raw materials. Today, the colouring power of plants such as camomile and indigo has been largely replaced by synthetic production. However, a return to this would be an option. Zeefier, initiated by Anne Boermans and Nienke Hoogvliet, offers a dye that is obtained from algae and is suitable for various natural textiles such as cotton, wool, silk or linen. Their raw material does not require fresh water, chemicals or monoculture cultivation. In addition, algae bind carbon and produce oxygen.
The artist Parmeetkaur Tesson, who comes from India and lives in the French region of Cognac, works on a smaller scale.
With From Grape Leaves, she has developed a yellow-green, almost neon-bright dye from grape leaves sourced from organic winegrowers. I have been working with grape leaves for the past three years, exploring their potential for producing natural dyes,’ says Parmeetkaur Tesson, who also documents seasonal variations. Every year I see different results because the colours are influenced by the climate, water availability and geographical conditions. This could also be a point that industry and consumers should move away from in the future: the expectation that texture and hue must always be reproducible identically. Clothes, furniture and objects would gain something uncontrollable and uniquely alive in the midst of our slick, digitalised present.
Also on ndion:
Organic, Mineral, Polymer: Innovative Materials for the Circular Economy
In the second part of our series on circular materials, we will be looking at rigid and flexible, organic and inorganic materials. We will also be looking at the different recycling methods for synthetic and natural materials.
