New approaches to sustainable fibres

Abstract

Sustainability is becoming a prerequisite to the future of the fashion industry. A sustainable vision of the fashion industry relies on fibre, material and product-based innovations. Sustainable fibres not only contribute to solving the environmental burden, but also are becoming a new trend in the fashion market. Moreover, the focus of the fashion industry today is moving beyond the design aspects of products into functional and therapeutic features. While the term “sustainable fibre” still accentuates organic cotton or recycled polyester, most other innovations addressing sustainability together with desirable features are stuck in the niche. The journey towards sustainable fibers is seemingly challenging with many failures. However, exciting innovations are emerging fast, challenging the traditional ways of producing fibres. One such way is emulating nature (biomimicking) in fibre-to-fabric production. Biomimicking research in textile production is a rapidly growing area and its true potential in the development of entirely sustainable fibres has yet to be discovered through interdisciplinary research with an understanding of the holistic approach of nature in its formation of organisms. Nature provides excellent examples of complex functional systems, which are created through entirely sustainable processes. Most importantly, those natural systems leave no trace of waste at the end of their lives. Keeping nature’s way in mind, this chapter pushes the concept of design to compost to address the challenges facing sustainable fashion. The chapter also reviews some examples of current trends in nature that inspire sustainable textile fibers and discusses potential research avenues for compostable textile fibers, which need to take on board the zero-waste approach of nature.