Nutritious and fast-growing, algae already has a following as an alternative protein among health fanatics. A new generation of sustainable fashion startups want us to wear it too.
The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion garments annually, about 14 for every person on Earth. Most end up in landfills or clogging rivers and beaches in developing countries. Only a fraction are ever recycled. Fashion is responsible for up to 10 per cent of humanity's emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide, more than international air travel and shipping combined.
“What I'm trying to emphasize is it doesn't just matter where they go but where they come from — 60 per cent of clothes are fossil fuels,” she says. “So I did tons of experiments and pulled together tons of technologies and had hundreds of beautiful failures before I was able to create this clear, very consistent plastic that is entirely free of synthetics and chemicals and is made only of algae.
Renana Krebs founded Algaeing in 2016, two years after quitting a career in fashion. Working with her father, a biofuels engineer, Krebs developed an algae-based alternative to the chemical and petroleum-based dyes ubiquitous in the clothing industry. Algaeing has raised about US$5 million from investors so far. Krebs is aiming to secure US$15 million in another funding round early next year to scale up. The idea is to sell a range of dyes, inks and yarn compatible with existing manufacturing equipment.“Our partners don't have to change their machinery, but in the end they're not harming the environment,” says Krebs. “They use less water, less energy, less transportation and even less lead time.
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