Case 102: Cluster: Fibers, food and biodiversity

Currently, the main natural fiber used in the textile industry is cotton. However, cotton also happens to have an incredibly large ecological footprint due to the way it is cultivated. The search for alternative fiber sources for the textile industry led us to investigate nettle fibers and seaweed-based textiles, two underutilized resources that contribute significantly to biodiversity. Seaweed is not only an ideal source of fiber, but these natural marine plants also sequester carbon dioxide, can be used as a source of nutrition and a range of fine chemicals, leading to the creation of a new cluster. Coffee-infused textiles are another innovation in this group. Coffee's ability to absorb odors and give synthetic fibers a hydrophilic quality is used to produce functional textiles. First you drink it, then you wear it. These new options utilize locally available resources, which were previously considered low-value, and ultimately create value-generating jobs and mobilize capital.

Keywords: Textile industry, Functional fibers, Seaweed (algae), Malnutrition, Nettle, Coffee, Biodiversity, Competitiveness.

Author: Gunter Pauli
Editor: Tara Van Ryneveld
Illustrator: Henning Brand

An introduction to the future of fibers

One of the interactions that sparked my interest in fibers was with Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia and his team. When I built the first eco-friendly factory in 1992, I ordered Capilene® underwear from Patagonia for all my workers to keep them warm while I turned down the factory heating to save on energy costs. This unusual order was met with disbelief by Patagonia's representative in Paris, who thought I was preparing for a major expedition to climb the Himalayas. I soon met Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, who told me I had placed the largest order of his new underwear to date. Over time, Yvon shared his concerns about the environmentally damaging quality of his fibers.

We had conference calls with his research team in 1999 about alternative fibers that would be at least as good as conventional fibers, but less harmful to the environment. I was always looking for ways to "do less harm.".

The work of Professor Keto Mshigeni, a Tanzanian-born marine scientist trained in Hawaii and a ZERI collaborator at the United Nations University between 1995 and 2000, drew my attention to the plight of sisal. Sisal originated in Mexico but was transplanted to East Africa, where large areas were converted over a century ago to produce boat ropes, carpets, paper, and fabric, until synthetic substitutes led to the demise of an entire industry. Professor Mshigeni, applying ZERI's logic of industry clustering and seeking to do more good with locally available resources, noted that as long as sisal was used solely as a fiber, it would lose out to petroleum-based alternatives. However, if sisal were used for its natural sugars, it could provide alcohol, serve as animal feed, or even produce pharmaceuticals such as hecogenin and inulin. In 1996, Professor Mshigeni and I traveled to Tanga, Tanzania, to witness the crisis affecting sisal farms.

Despite the abundance of scientific knowledge about the possibilities offered by sisal, production fell by more than 50% over the following decade, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs and livelihoods.

We are not alone in seeking alternatives to the current way the textile industry operates. Sybilla Sorondo, a prominent fashion designer of Argentinian origin, made a name for herself with a portfolio for Louis Vuitton and her own brand, Sybilla, which is popular in Japan. During a period of burnout in her career, she reflected on the true impact of her products and realized that the materials were rarely natural and that few workers were paid enough to earn a living wage. At one of the blue economy training seminars held at her center in Mallorca, Sybilla and I discussed possible ways forward. She quickly established Fabrics for Freedom and began developing a series of integrated textile projects focused on social and environmental performance.

Witnessing the disappearance of sisal, and the jobs associated with it, brought me closer to its main natural competitor in the fiber market: cotton. Katherine Tiddens, the founder of the eco-friendly store Terra Verde in Soho, New York, had shown me the extraordinary variety of colors cotton can naturally produce. She had warned me about its heavy environmental footprint: too much water and too many pesticides. It even seemed preferable to buy synthetic rather than cotton. A trip to China in 1997 confronted me with the realities of cotton at that time. The United States had lost its competitiveness in cotton farming, but not because of low production costs in China. The rising cost of water, groundwater pollution, and the need to use less toxic (and more expensive) chemicals to protect cotton from caterpillars meant that Americans were happy to shift cotton production to China and India—today the world's first and second largest cotton producers. Over the years, I've observed the growing unease of Professor Li Wenhua, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, regarding the enormous water consumption and chemical use involved. China, like many others, has slowly become aware of the reality, and policymakers' support for the continued cotton boom has waned.
The connection between Patagonia, sisal, and cotton inspired me to create a special network for the fibers of the future within ZERI. The future of cotton is determined by the extreme scarcity of water in China, and elsewhere. A single T-shirt requires 2,700 liters of water. We've researched and traveled the world, but the only significant alternative we've identified is hemp. But I felt that a lot of work had already been done on hemp – it reached almost 2 million tons of production in 2012. Replacing cotton, a 30 million ton crop, with a single crop won't provide a fundamental solution. We need to diversify our offerings. So I chose to focus ZERI's creative energy on different opportunities, less obvious than hemp.

While numerous searches had been conducted across China, the 2008 Summer Olympics served as a catalyst for developing an alternative strategy. The city of Qingdao was slated to host the water-related Olympic Games. Unfortunately, every summer, the area around the gateway is invaded by seaweed (we prefer not to use the term "algae"). Its prolific growth forced the municipalities to call upon the Chinese army and navy to clean the sea or cancel the Olympics, which was not an option. The total amount of seaweed collected just before the World Games reached 2 million tons.

Considered weeds, seaweed was dumped in a landfill, generating methane. Scientists from the National Laboratory of New Materials at Qingdao University worked with the Xiyingmen Group, one of China's largest towel manufacturers, and launched a research program to produce seaweed-based fibers. China's total potential for seaweed-based fiber production was estimated at ten million tons in 2009. Field research conducted in cooperation with the ZERI Foundation in 2012 determined that Indonesia and India are the two other countries capable of replacing the current cotton supply chain with a renewable alternative such as seaweed extracts. The macro-analysis—cotton cultivation—was now validated by the research data.

It was Professor Lucio Brusch, founder of the ZERI Foundation Brazil, who discovered algae while he was a management professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. He continued the discussion with Professor Jorge Alberto Vieira Costa of the Federal University of Rio Grande. They noted that southern Brazil is home to the greatest biodiversity of microalgae in the world. At the same time, this region faces unacceptable levels of malnutrition. The professors embarked on a research program aimed at cultivating algae to combat hunger, leveraging the power of its biodiversity. They began with pilot programs in rice paddies in 1997 and quickly expanded algae production to the retention ponds of cooling towers at coal-fired power plants. This program became an integral part of the "Fome Zero" (Zero Hunger) initiative of then-Brazilian President Ignacio Lula Silva.

The team has grown over the years into a remarkable algae knowledge center, now considered one of the top five in the world. While fiber producers discovered that their supply chain could produce nutrients, algae producers in Brazil quickly realized they could produce fiber. Dr. Michele Grecque de Morais, then a young doctoral student in Jorge's lab, was the first to identify a way to extract esters from algae and obtained a patent for this breakthrough. The CNpQ, Brazil's research promotion council, supported the research and its results with dozens of published scientific articles on the subject. The Brazilian project was unique in that it did not consider fuel production from algae a priority. These research initiatives in the Global South have primarily evaluated plants and algae as sources of nutrition and tissue. The new fibers are derived from locally available resources (microalgae) that currently provide no economic value. This follows one of the principles of the blue economy: converting nothing (or something worthless) into something of great value.

In recent years, some progress has been made. The German company Smart Fiber AG (www.smartfiber.de), producer of SeaCell, processes seaweed from the Irish coast to create its textile fibers. It can replace up to 25% of the fibers used to manufacture products such as VitaSea fabric, marketed by the Canadian company Lululemon (www.lululemon.com/education/info/natural) and the American company Underwear Options (www.underwear-options.com/seacellfibers.html). If seaweed fabric is slow to penetrate the market, it is primarily a supply issue. Production technologies need to be refined.

The Belgian company Sioen (www.sioen.be) has embraced seaweed fibers and secured support from the European Commission to overcome production challenges. The European Union now recognizes seaweed as an underutilized resource for human food, animal feed, and biochemical raw materials, including ingredients for fabric production. Bert Groenendaal, Sioen's R&D director, believes that with the necessary science, this emerging textile will generate a multi-billion-dollar industry that will stimulate growth and employment by utilizing an abundant and undervalued resource. However, harvesting wild seaweed for rope and fiber production will never be a competitive force. Trials of cultivation methods in Solund (Norway), Oban (Scotland), and Galway (Ireland) have demonstrated yields of 16 kg of cultivated wet seaweed per square meter, with potential to increase to 20-25 kg. This yield is more than five times greater than that of seaweed traditionally harvested in the open sea.

Europeans interested in algae-based textiles also view this activity as a cluster. Algae provide marine polysaccharides used as additives in processed foods such as chocolate milk, yogurt, and beer. More refined extraction could yield lipids, antioxidants, gelling agents, vitamins, and essential minerals. It is the combination of food and textiles based on biodiversity that makes the innovations within the cluster so appealing. It is
both profitable and has a reduced environmental footprint: algae absorb CO₂, which in the long term allows for the exploitation of natural resources,
thus reducing the long-term impact of this greenhouse gas. This changes the framework and potential for quality of life, job creation, and life within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. This is very different from cotton, where it all began.

When the ZERI España team traveled to the Lea Artibai region of the Basque Country to identify new business development opportunities using local resources, they found an abundance of nettles, which were once used as a source of food and clothing. The wisdom of the past has been replaced by cotton. Zara, the Galician-based textile giant, is one of the world's largest buyers of cotton. Ironically, it is located in one of the world's richest regions for seaweed and nettles. After the local government was shown the potential of both, political, civic, and business leaders began to reconsider their view of the textile industry, long considered a relic of the past.

The EU funded a group of German, Austrian, and Italian companies to advance the processing of nettles. This project was led by Dr. Falko Feldmann, then scientific director of the Solkau Institute for Plant Culture in Germany (www.mykorrhiza.de). Nettles also garnered attention in the UK with extensive research conducted at De Montford University in Leicester, under the title Sustainable Technologies in Nettle Growing (STING). Camira Fabrics (www.camirafabrics.com/be-inspired/design-stories/nettle-collection), a UK-based global leader in fabrics for commercial interiors, produces 8 million meters of fabric annually and includes nettle in its portfolio.

Nettle has also become an essential component of the high-quality textiles offered by the Swiss company Swicofil (www.swicofil.com). It is one of the few textile companies that has managed to maintain its competitive position in a country where costs are high thanks to its remarkable innovations in fabrics. Swicofil sources its nettle yarn from Nepal. The Himalayas are teeming with nettles, which grow prolifically in the wild up to altitudes of 3,000 meters. It boasts both a rich history and is positioned as a fabric of the future. Even today, Bhutanese men continue to wear their national costume, the Gho, traditionally made from nettle fibers.

While the European textile industry has been slow to adopt any new natural fiber, Alex Dear, from Cambridge, UK, produced her own "nettle panties" at the age of 23 as part of a lingerie line. Sue Clowes, the English textile and fashion designer, is known for her nettle collection launched by Boy George, the British singer-songwriter. Internet millionaire Bob Crebas chose to create a new company – Brennels BV (www.netl.nl) – to launch the production of nettle-based fashion products. He sourced the best seeds on the market and planted 80 hectares of nettles in the Netherlands, with additional crops in the Czech Republic and Lithuania. However, this nettle venture closed its doors shortly after its creation. The quick money made on the internet proved insufficient for the long-term patience required for innovative fibers like nettles. The blue economy network, which implements the ZERI philosophy, is used to translate the vision, often from the imagination, into reality, by balancing science and a taste for risk.

In 2006, Jason Chen, originally from Taiwan, launched a new company called Singtex. His niche market is functional textiles. He used something many already know from experience: coffee absorbs odors. Jason and his team succeeded in blending coffee with fibers to control odors. During their research, they also discovered that coffee protects color pigments and fibers from ultraviolet rays, and that it can transform a synthetic fiber into a hydrophilic fabric. The use of coffee (post-industrial and post-consumer) now has a surprising new application: coffee textiles.

It was Bill Werlin, then Patagonia's country manager in Japan, who told me about this opportunity. A few weeks later, during a trip to Taiwan, I visited Singtex and met the enthusiastic team that Jason and his wife had assembled. We had assumed that sustainable fabrics should be natural fabrics that form clusters of products and services derived from biomass processing. However, sustainable fabrics could also be the partial substitution of petrochemical ingredients with synthetic fibers, using organic input from coffee. Singtex is revolutionizing the textile industry. This innovative company, which went public on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 2014, now supplies more than 100 well-known brands with coffee-based textiles.

The product not only changes the design of Patagonia and Adidas products, but it also stimulates entrepreneurship, as demonstrated by Javier Goyeneche, the founder of EcoAlf (www.ecoalf.com). Perhaps the most charming marketing campaign for using coffee in shoe fabric came from Timberland: “Drink it – Wear it.” Given our decades of work in coffee cultivation, this seemed a surprising, yet logical, extension of our commitment to the livelihoods of Colombia’s 640,000 coffee farmers. So we set out to introduce Colombian coffee farmers to textiles made from coffee waste.

Our close relationship with Singtex and the Colombian Federation of Coffee Producers has led to the creation of a new business proposition: textiles made with 100% Colombian coffee. Thanks to a year of collaboration, a new integrated textile initiative has emerged in Colombia. Constanza Jaramillo, executive director of Café Buendía, has emerged as the entrepreneur behind this venture. Constanza produces instant coffee in Chinchiná, in the heart of the coffee-growing region known as "El Eje Cafetero." The factory uses CO2 to extract the soluble part of the beans. The remaining 25 tons per day is incinerated. A fact-finding mission led by Jason Chen identified the opportunity to separate the coffee oil (up to 20%) from the solids and use both fractions as additives for woven and non-woven textiles.

This shift from waste incineration to the creation of raw materials for functional coffee textiles occurred just as all strategists were concluding that Colombia's free trade agreements would spell the end of the textile industry. The blue economy approach demonstrates once again that this traditional economic analysis is flawed. With technical assistance from Singtex, Lafayette (Bogotá) produces yarn and fabric from Colombian coffee grounds from the Cafe Buendia instant coffee production unit. SuperTex (Cali) transforms it into fabric, and Juan Valdez, the chain of 400 farmer-owned cafes, sells the stylish T-shirts on the local market. The short-term impact of this initiative on coffee and textiles globally is minimal, but its potential is enormous. It has the potential to change the future of coffee producers by utilizing locally available resources and offering high-performance products at competitive prices.

Functional textile yarn is expensive. However, when the technical component can be sourced from renewable sources at prices higher than the value of the energy it embodies, it becomes possible to sell higher-quality yarn at a lower price. While no farmer could ever dream of earning more than a thousand dollars per ton of coffee, their waste can now be converted into a textile input that not only offers a unique selling proposition but also pays even better. That's the blue economy.

We have been searching for the "next" textile industry for almost two decades and have explored several options. We are convinced that the global network of researchers with whom we have had the pleasure of working and connecting represents only a part of the emerging transition from cotton to a wide range of "blue fibers." Since this cluster does not cover the work of Novamont in Italy, with the production of polymers from agricultural waste, nor does it analyze the pioneering research initiatives of Prof. Dr. Fritz Vollrath with natural polymers produced by insects—both of which are separate cases—it already demonstrates that a whole new field of industries is emerging, where the competitive force is not the lipids or oils contained in plants or algae, but rather the combination of nutritious foods and functional fabrics.

As our network continues to monitor the multiple entrepreneurial initiatives and interact with all these actors through our local researchers and agitators, we are taking the pulse of the arrival of the necessary and urgent breakthroughs, while addressing the dynamics of job creation in regions where the textile industry has been wiped off the map.

Therefore, this cluster is part of a reindustrialization movement that characterizes blue economy initiatives. To date, we have seen $120 million invested in research and development, capital investments, and marketing programs, with the majority of this money spent in China and Taiwan, closely followed by research programs in Brazil. While there is at least 20 times more investment
in converting algae into fuel, we are excluding this figure because we have no relationships with the stakeholders. More importantly, we do not believe this is the strategic shift we need. Burning biomass or an extract should always remain a last resort. Regarding job creation, current figures indicate that the narrowly defined activities of this cluster directly employ 1,400 people, and indirect job creation adds another 1,100, primarily in downstream sales and marketing activities.

We know the Earth cannot produce more cotton. Furthermore, we must reduce our cotton consumption as much as we must reduce our meat consumption. And just as we must produce protein more sustainably, we must dress the world more intelligently. Ultimately, we must learn to do more with what the Earth provides instead of depleting already scarce resources like land and water. This will allow us to create a new reality where we can meet everyone's basic needs.

Gunter's Fables Translation

The activity of using nettle textiles is explored in fable #51, entitled "Nettle Sting." It is dedicated to Sybilla Sorondo, who inspired the creation of this hub in 2004 through her self-criticism of the fashion industry and her commitment, in 2009, to creating Fabrics for Freedom. The innovative use of algae is explored in fable #39, entitled "Dressed Up in Algae." It is dedicated to Suzanne Lee, who created BioCouture to promote bio-design in fashion. Both fables will be published first in Chinese and English in China and will be available as an e-book at www.guntersfables.org.

Documentation

http://www.feldmann-lifescience.de/transfers/Urtica.htm

http://sff.arts.ac.uk/Fibre%20Processing/bastfibresproces.html