A global initiative that tasks itself with the vision to make all fashion good, the Amsterdam headquartered Fashion for Good has come out with a pioneering report that seeks to cut through the gradually amplifying babble on 'biomaterials'. Managing director Katrin Ley answers questions from Richa Bansal on what triggered the study, biotech innovations in terms of scope, scale and implementation, adoption by the textiles industry, and the challenge in aligning stakeholders across the value chain to a vision that can facilitate momentum and action towards sustainable, circular processes and systems.
Biomaterials - I was reading through the entire material on understanding biomaterials innovations - pretty complicated for the lay industry person. But these are going to get increasingly critical. How do you plan to make the concepts easily understood by the textiles niche-the medium scale mass processor/manufacturer/brand/retailer?
Over the last 10 years or so various words with 'bio' in the title have been used in the industry. They include words like 'biobased', 'biomaterial', 'biotechnology', 'biosynthetic', 'biofabrication' or 'biodesign'. This evolution has come from innovators, brands, manufacturers and investors looking to benchmark and explain new innovations in this space.
The term biomaterials is very broad and often general assumptions are made that bio must mean better or that the end-product is biodegradable but this is not always the case. It's also evident that even amongst the scientific community there are variations in terms of understanding around different processes, etc. This report brings together the insights of innovators, brands and the wider ecosystem to better understand the language being used. It is intended to help with B2B relationships. To help startups, brands, manufacturers and investors in speaking a common language. This is designed to help them align on goals for material innovation, to forge stronger partnerships, to educate internally and equip communications teams as they disseminate their innovation stories to the media and wider public. We imagine that a further simplified or even an alternative language will be used to speak to the final end customer-the consumer.
What did your interviews with industry experts on the biofabrication landscape and biotech innovations tell you in terms of scope, scale and implementation? What triggered this study?
At Biofabricate's London 2019 summit one of the audience members asked if there were any guidelines or standards emerging in this field. The answer was 'no'; alongside this there are currently no fully-scaled biofabricated materials in the market. It became apparent that there is a general lack of understanding across the fashion industry with regards to not only biofabricated but also biomaterials. The same questions are asked by so many brands, media and investors: what do the different terms mean, what is in the materials, how are they made, how are they different, which has the lowest environmental impact.
Biomaterials cover a wide range of different materials. It is crucial to be able to evaluate the environmental and social impact of new innovations to understand that overall, these new materials have a lower footprint than those they are looking to replace. Data plays a key role in this. Bio doesn't always mean better and we do need to be able to validate sustainability claims. It's important for innovators, brands and manufacturers alike to have an understanding of how these new innovations fit into the existing ecosystem.
Scaling: Some startups or technologies outsource this phase to external facilities who have the necessary infrastructure. This could take from months to years of further iteration, with materials even returning to R&D, before moving to the next phase of scaling. Learnings at this stage can then help facilitate the development of full-scale production systems or help iron out any challenges so it can then be dropped into the existing supply chain.
Time to scale is also quite variable depending on the product-a molecule such as a precursor chemical will likely scale much faster than a material created from scratch. The latter requires innovation not only in the science, biology and chemistry but also further textile processing. On average people expect it to take between 5 and 10 years to scale up. This varies depending on whether R&D research is taken into account.
Let's look ahead to say 2035. How do you envisage will the world/business of fashion be-with respect to mass utilisation/consumption of clothing/furnishings manufactured through biomaterials?
Innovation needs to happen across the supply chain, not just in the materials space. Clothing should be utilised for longer, keeping them in circulation through business models such as recommerce and rental, increasing product durability. Or alternatively reworking existing clothes to make new items. At the same time, they should be designed with the end of use in mind, thinking about how those materials can be reused or recycled within a system. You also need to be able to effectively get those products back through takeback and sorting.
All materials have different environmental and social impacts associated with them. Conventional cotton production accounts for 1/6 of all pesticides used globally, impacting farmers and local communities with harmful chemicals. Polyester, one of the most commonly used fabrics, can take over 200 years to decompose. What's important is that each brand is aware of their most commonly used materials and works towards implementing better supply chain and manufacturing processes associated with these materials. That could be transitioning towards BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) or organic cotton or using recycled polyester. There are often more sustainable options out there for conventional fibres and it's about having a strategy and/or commitment to move towards these better materials.
Biomaterials: Many brands have begun their journey in this space but challenges around financing have slowed the pace of change. The industry is reliant on the development of these new disruptive solutions to accelerate the transformation to sustainable circular practices. However, too many innovators still fail to receive the support needed from stakeholders within the ecosystem including brands, investors and supply chain partners. The industry must collaborate to actively engineer the conditions for these innovators to succeed.
The good news is that the last five years has seen an exponential growth of material innovation tackling biological alternatives to fossil fuel, plant and animal; dyes, chemicals, fibres, fabrics, and leather alternatives. There is more awareness amongst investors and brands alike of the coming wave of consumer biotech solutions made possible by synthetic biology and biodesign tools. More capital is available, more partnerships are opening up, and more consumers are demanding sustainable alternatives.
These new technologies are not yet "silver bullets," however. Nature's materials like cotton, wool, silk, cashmere, leather, etc are prized because they meet so many needs; comfort, durability, and transformative possibilities-all delivered at prices that reflect centuries of industrial efficiency. High performing manmade synthetics, based on cheap fossil fuel, have also raised our expectations of material innovation to encompass properties beyond those offered by nature; super stretch, colour saturation and fastness, performance finishes, extreme durability and so forth. History teaches us that material innovation is a constant journey of iteration and improvements It took DuPont ten years to create Lycra, a further three to bring it to market, but sixty years later the material still continues to evolve and improve.
We should also caution against unintended consequences. The drive for "more sustainable" replacements can lead to material innovation that has not carefully considered the full implications of a particular technology or process in a holistic manner. While brands are eager to find alternative materials, it would be disastrous if the push for rapid innovation led to those same efforts creating a new generation of harmful products. All aspects of a new material need to be factored before mass adoption if we are to avoid unforeseen environmental issues down the line. End of use should be the first consideration not the last.
Sustainability, circularity-buzzwords for now and obviously biomaterials are the way forward to protect Mother Earth. How easily accessible will technologies and materials be? Or, for at least half a decade or more biomaterials will be primarily limited to the niche innovator fraternity?
Most new technologies are often limited in quantity and come with a high price tag, but economies of scale help bring prices down over time. Biofabricated materials, in almost all instances, will sell at a premium / high cost for the foreseeable future. As a result, brands at the mass or lower end of the market will likely have to wait a little while longer before bringing these materials to market. This report is designed to help distinguish the complexities around these different processes and to contribute understanding about why biofabricated products take longer to develop and scale. As they do scale, they bring a new era of material innovation with properties and impacts improving upon those we have today. This will have us rethinking materials for decades to come.
While fashion brands often look for a black and white answer to the question "which is the most sustainable material or process?" it's not possible to hold up any one process as "better" than another when there are so many potential variables in each system. Not all these biomaterials have the same impact. Whatever innovators or brands call their technologies and materials, and how much the consumer cares or understands about what those terms mean, one cannot assume that "bio" = better. To really understand the impact of different materials you have to go deeper and understand how it's made, what inputs are used and what the potential impacts of those might be.
By when do you expect research and results in biomaterials will be readily available and at what costs?
At first launch, new technologies are often limited in quantity and command a high price. This price tag reflects the years of investment in R&D and infrastructure, often building an organization from scratch. As well as the fact that the process is often not yet optimised for scale. However, as with all technologies, economies of scale will bring these prices down over time. Often brands are willing to absorb a slightly higher price tag in the earlier stages of a partnership. However, this tolerance is often only into single digit differences.
To help scale innovations faster, it's effective to leverage existing supply chains and to build partnerships with key stakeholders in the production process. Most startups in this space are the equivalent of several companies in one, and can benefit from support from experienced technical partners. These decisions can help speed up development timelines and also negate the need to recruit and build in-house expertise, which is both difficult and time consuming. An example of this is the partnership between Bolt Threads and German tannery Heller-Leder announced in 2019. Such partnerships help accelerate the materials coming to market.
However, there is a common misconception that these radical new material innovations are 'just around the corner': contrary to the sense one might get from media reports, only one or two biofabricated textile products are in the market in 2020. For example, AMSilk's biofabricated watchstrap with luxury brand Omega (launched in 2018), while Japanese company Spiber has also released a limited-edition series of jackets in collaboration with The North Face (launched in 2019) as well as couture collections with designer Yuima Nakazato and t-shirts with Sacai (also 2019). It is still the very beginning of a material revolution that will unfold over the coming decades. The promise of these technologies is that designed biology allows access to all the benefits of nature's performance, aesthetics and comfort and beyond, but without the same environmental footprint. The demand for new biomaterial innovations currently massively outstrips supply, especially in the newer biofabricated sector.
For the world to see the change it needs, don't you think there is the need for a very ambitious over-arching platform that can act as a catalyst to drive this change?
That's exactly what we're trying to achieve at Fashion for Good. Convening the industry to bring all key players from the apparel industry-brands, retailers, suppliers, non-profit organisations, innovators and funders together, aligned in a shared ambition to make all fashion good. Through collaboration, such as this with Biofabricate for example, raise awareness of the solutions that are driving that change, and through pilot projects, implement these technologies into mainstream and wide practice.
This article was first published in the January 2021edition of the print magazine.
Published on: 09/02/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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