Name: Startups are helping the fashion industry go green
Uploaded: 2021-06-21
Duration: 4 min 44 s
Description: Fashion emits as much carbon as Germany, the UK and France combined.

Fashion emits as much carbon as Germany, the UK and France combined.

Startups are helping the fashion industry go green

Environment

if you handle this to someone and you said shut your eyes and feel this material and tell me what you have in your hand, they would say it's a piece of love it. That is rather amazing because it's made of mushrooms. So the fashion industry has a very specific role and crucial role to play in uh in the global, global path towards sustainability. Because where we stand right now is the industry is commissioning roughly two billion tons of CO two, which is roughly 4% of total greenhouse gas emissions that we have, which is roughly equivalent to watch Germany UK and France in totality would emission together. So this is a lot. So there is significant and urgent need for action, which I believe also starting to really think in with executives across the industry, everybody uses textiles. We are all wearing clothes right now. We all carry bags, we all wear shoes, textiles are one of the most pervasive categories of product on earth. When you, when you look at the entire value chain of fashion, roughly, 40% of all emissions are somewhat related to the material. Use over 75% of all governments are theoretically produce a bubble out of alternative fibers or retractable fibers, But actually below 10% today are produced out of these types of fibers. So the full value train is about rethinking every activity through a sustainable doing and bolt thread. A startup organization is a fantastic partner in rethinking and innovating where materials come from and ultimately what impact they have on the planet. And the first iteration of that in the partnership is utilizing mycelium. Mycelium is the roof structure of a mushroom. So it's what you, you see a mushroom as it grows out of the ground or it grows up the side of a tree. The mycelium is everything you don't see that is under the ground. We grow our mycelium on a specialty mushroom farm. These things are grown in the dark, what you would see when you open the door after they're finished growing are these trays with fluffy layer on top of the tray, It looks and feels and squishes just like marshmallow. A lot of transformation happens between that marshmallow and the leather. It's no secret that growing animals has a very large environmental footprint. You know, it takes a year to grow up house. That is a big, long, impactful process. We can grow this product in less than a week. The first product that we decided to use the milo material on is this dan smith. So the milo stan smith has just been launched and as it's an exploration of using this new material, we could only make a small amount of cares and we put those pears out to test them. And now we're working on the next steps of how we can scale that product. We are working today with Adidas, caring, lulu, lemon and Stella McCartney. I think traditionally we like to think of these people as being competitors, but they actually, when you put them in a room and they're all working towards the common goal, they actually can collaborate. We don't have all the answers and we need partnerships to help fund the way forward for sustainability. We recognize that both reds needs the support and the investment to get that innovation up and running so that we can be at the point of scaling it. Ultimately, the investors have a critical role to play all of these innovations are largely driven by startups, often in collaboration with big brands for the investment requirements and that's where these brands are just invaluable. If we were simply a group of scientists in a lab would come up with a novel material, how would an investor really know that we might be capable of taking its market? I think, in our industry, it's up to leadership, That's what's going to make a real difference. We have to start changing the objective that we put forward for our company, and if we can work together, that's when we'll really start to make the difference. Yeah.