The Bezos Earth Fund has awarded $34M in four grants to develop sustainable, plastic-free textile fibres, including cotton and silk, for the fashion industry.
If it’s up to Jeff Bezos, your future wardrobe could house fabrics made from bacterial waste, spider-free silk, and lab-grown cotton.
The Amazon founder’s namesake $10B climate fund has announced the latest tranche of grants dedicated to futureproofing a highly emissive industry, targeting next-gen materials that can replace cotton, silk and polyester in the clothing sector.
Bezos Earth Fund has committed $34M to four projects making breakthrough fibres for the textile and fashion industries, working with researchers across the US.
The grants focus on “reinventing the fabrics” our clothes are made of, since the materials and manufacturing behind them are responsible for 80% of the industry’s climate footprint, spanning greenhouse gas emissions, water use and pollution, and landfilled waste.
“When I started asking questions about how clothes are actually made, I couldn’t stop. The science happening right now is incredible,” said Lauren Sánches Bezos, the fund’s vice-chair. “These teams are growing fibre from bacteria, engineering cotton that comes out of the ground in colour, and creating silk-like fibres from compost. That’s not just good for the planet. That’s the future of fashion.”
What will Bezos Earth Fund’s fashion grants focus on?
Bezos Earth Fund’s new grants will centre on the R&D of materials that look and feel like conventional rayon, silk and cotton, but with superior cost, performance and environmental attributes.
The largest sum goes to Columbia University, which will receive $11.5M to develop a high-quality textile fibre by feeding bacteria on agricultural waste, in collaboration with the Fashion Institute of Technology. This material will be strong, flexible, breathable and biodegradable, would require almost no land, and will not contribute to microplastic pollution.
Clemson University will benefit from $11M to use gene-editing and synthetic biology to develop and test new cotton varieties with built-in colour, enhance performance, and improve resilience. The project will be conducted with the University of Georgia, and will result in cotton that can rival synthetic alternatives with a lower climate impact.
Another $10M is being awarded to the University of California, Berkeley, which is working with scientists from Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology to develop a high-performance, biodegradable alternative to spider silk, without relying on silkworms, spiders, or plastic.
Finally, the Bezos Earth Fund is investing $1.5M in The Cotton Foundation to support the restoration of the world’s most diverse, publicly accessible cotton seedbank, which scientists and farmers can use to develop and grow improved varieties of the material.
As the fund points out, designers need beautiful, high-performing materials, retailers need consistent quality at viable prices, and manufacturers need materials that can be incorporated into existing equipment and infrastructure. Investing in the science and engineering of climate-friendly materials can, therefore, drive performance up and premiums down.
Why the fashion sector needs a climate-friendly overhaul
The fashion sector is a major contributor to the climate crisis. “If no action is taken, over the next 20 years, the fashion industry is set to emit 712 million tonnes of CO2e,” Emma Håkansson, founder-director of US charity Collective Fashion Justice, told Green Queen last year.
The organisation’s estimates suggest that this sector generates 8.3 million tonnes of methane annually – that’s nearly four times as high as France (2.1 million tonnes). While animal-derived materials make up the majority of this share, cotton production accounts for 11% of the total (mainly from fibre processing, rather than raw material production).
Cotton cultivation accounts for 2.5% of the world’s arable land, and 16% of all pesticide use every year. In fact, the industry is responsible for 22% of global agrochemical use, and emits 220 million tonnes of CO2e annually – that’s a larger climate footprint than Argentina or the UAE.
More concerning is its water consumption. The amount of water required to make a single cotton T-shirt could sustain a human being for two-and-a-half years. This basically translates to 250 billion tonnes of water being used to grow cotton every year. (Some industry groups say these figures need some more nuance.)
Plastic-based clothing is highly problematic as well. The production of the material is responsible for 3.4% of global emissions, and it takes 20 to 500 years to break down.
It’s why many startups are now working on sustainable alternatives to conventional textile fibres. US startup Galy is producing lab-grown cotton in bioreactors, and has been backed by the likes of Bill Gates, Sam Altman, H&M and Inditex.
Circulose and Evrnu recycle cotton waste into climate-friendly fibres, Alt Tex is making a food-waste-based alternative to polyester, and Spiber is feeding microbes on agricultural waste to create “brewed proteins” that can be turned into alternatives to cashmere, fur, wool, leather, silk and synthetic fibres.
“This investment from the Bezos Earth Fund comes at a critical moment to protect one of agriculture’s most valuable genetic resources,” said Chad Brewer, executive director of The Cotton Foundation. “By strengthening the foundation of cotton genetics, we can advance more resilient, sustainable natural fibres, offering safe, scalable alternatives to synthetic materials.”
Clemson University professor Christopher Saski added: “This work fundamentally focuses on how we grow fibres that can be inherently better for the planet by moving colour, performance, and resilience upstream into the biology of cotton itself. This approach flips the traditional model that has been used for more than a century to build a future of sustainable fashion.”
Source: https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/