{"id":62389,"date":"2019-04-17T07:23:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T05:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=62389"},"modified":"2019-04-12T12:32:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T10:32:57","slug":"this-tech-can-make-fabric-from-old-clothing-agricultural-waste-and-even-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/this-tech-can-make-fabric-from-old-clothing-agricultural-waste-and-even-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"This tech can make fabric from old clothing, agricultural waste – and even trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your future T-shirts might be made from potato peels, wheat straw, trees, or even former T-shirts instead of virgin cotton. In Finland, a startup has developed new technology<\/a> that can transform cellulosic fiber into fiber for the textile industry\u2013without the environmental challenges of older materials.<\/p>\n

Spinnova, based in Jyv\u00e4skyl\u00e4, Finland, finished building a pilot factory in late 2018. Inside, patented machines grind up wood pulp and agricultural waste into tiny fibers that can be spun into wool and then made into fabric for clothing. The process has advantages over cotton, which requires large amounts of water to grow\u2013often in water-stressed regions\u2013and also uses large amounts of pesticides.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur water usage is minimal,\u201d says Janne Poranen, CEO and cofounder of Spinnova, the winner of Fast Company\u2019s 2019 World Changing Ideas Award<\/a> in the Experimental category. The startup has calculated that it uses more than 99% less water than cotton, largely because it\u2019s using trees that don\u2019t need irrigation as they grow. The process also doesn\u2019t use harmful chemicals. Unlike some other materials that can be made from trees, such as viscose, it doesn\u2019t use chemicals to break down tough fibers. The process is mechanical. \u201cWe\u2019re able to produce continuous filament, which is basically all-natural,\u201d says Poranen. \u201cThat is unique.\u201d The material also avoids the problems of synthetic fabrics like polyester, which are typically made from fossil fuels and can contribute to plastic waste in the ocean when tiny fibers break off of clothing in washing machines and flow down drains into waterways.<\/p>\n

The company is beginning first with wood pulp as a raw material\u2013perhaps unsurprisingly, since it\u2019s based in a region known for forestry and forest products\u2013and with wheat straw, a form of agricultural waste. But over the last few years, it has experimented with multiple other sources of fiber, from carrot peels to cotton clothing. \u201cWe\u2019ve only scratched the surface of what options we have available as raw materials,\u201d he says. Clothing as a source of fiber is particularly interesting, because cotton is typically difficult to recycle; if you drop off a pair of old jeans for recycling at a store, they\u2019ll likely turn into a lower-quality material like insulation. The new process, which creates a gel-like material called microfibrillated cellulose, re-creates a high-quality fabric. In theory, brands could take back their old clothing to use as raw material in a fully closed loop. As Spinnova ramps up production at its new factory, it\u2019s now in talks with clothing companies that want to do exactly that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your future T-shirts might be made from potato peels, wheat straw, trees, or even former T-shirts instead of virgin cotton. In Finland, a startup has developed new technology that can transform cellulosic fiber into fiber for the textile industry\u2013without the environmental challenges of older materials. Spinnova, based in Jyv\u00e4skyl\u00e4, Finland, finished building a pilot factory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[13445,13444,15657,12468],"supplier":[14732],"class_list":["post-62389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-clothing","tag-fabrics","tag-naturalfiber","tag-textiles","supplier-spinnova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62389"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=62389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}