It’s Earth Day 2024. Theme: PLANET VS. PLASTICS.
Most plastic pollution isn’t visible to the eye. Microplastics, tiny fragments of less than 5 mm, are everywhere. In fact, there is a high likelihood that what you’re wearing right now is part of one of the biggest plastic problems we’re currently facing. A shocking 56% of all the clothing we wear is made of plastic, with an accelerating volume of plastic-based apparel churning out of the fast fashion industry.
At Conservation X Labs, we know this problem all too well.
And our bet is on the planet.
We bring a relentless optimism to this fight because we know that collaborative innovation and the power of human ingenuity can put an end to the problem of plastics.
Our Microfiber Innovation Challenge in 2020, which called for solutions to replace sources of microfiber pollution and prevent microfiber shedding, resulted in five companies – Natural Fiber Welding, Squitex, PANGAIA x MTIX, Mango Materials, and Werewool – have raised tens of millions in follow-on funding, have partnered with multinational brands, and have been featured in New York Fashion Week.
This year, we are pointing the spotlight back at the textile industry, one of the largest plastic offenders. Our Textile Circularity Challenge takes on the linear fashion economy - which poses a triple threat of resource overconsumption, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Textile recyclers need high volumes of consistent, well-defined feedstocks in order to compete with virgin materials. However, sorting and pre-processing are complex, costly, and labor-intensive. These steps represent major bottlenecks preventing circular textile systems from scaling.
We are bringing together stakeholders from every link of the textile supply chain to solve for (1) Identifying and Sorting – bringing mixed post-consumer textile waste to the highest number of clean, valuable streams possible, at the throughput and accuracy recyclers need to scale. And, for (2) Disassembling and Converting sorted waste textiles into usable feedstocks that meet the quality standards recyclers need, while minimizing downcycling and waste.
We are extremely grateful for the support of our partners and funders thus far. And, we are seeking additional resourcing partners to allow us to launch this important challenge. If you are connected to a company or an individual who sees the value in tackling textile waste, please reach out.
Bet on the planet with us.
