Fashion is one of the most resource-intensive industries – consuming vast amounts of water, driving pollution, and fuelling biodiversity loss through extractive sourcing and wasteful production. With demand continuing to grow, the system is locked into a model that depletes nature while leaving brands exposed to risk from regulation, shifting consumer expectations, and unstable supply chains.
To change course, the industry needs innovations that reduce its dependence on virgin resources, cut toxic inputs, and design out waste. Barriers remain: material alternatives aren’t yet scaled, recycling is fragmented, and business models still reward volume over longevity. But new solutions are showing how fashion can reimagine itself – replacing harmful chemicals with nature-derived processes, embedding circularity into supply chains, and creating products designed for durability, repair, and reuse.
This section highlights practical, scalable innovations already proving that fashion can deliver on performance and style while both utilising and restoring nature.
Nature, Climate
RFID Tags to Reduce Emissions, Waste and Ecosystem Destruction
Every year, billions of conventional RFID tags are used to track and manage inventory – most made with aluminium antennas and plastic substrates. Once removed from products, these single-use tags typically end up in landfill, wasting finite resources and releasing harmful emissions. Mining and processing the metals alone drives deforestation, pollutes waterways, and disrupts fragile ecosystems.
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Nature, Climate
Enabling Synthetic Textiles to Biodegrade
CiCLO® technology is tackling one of fashion’s most urgent challenges: microplastic pollution from synthetic textiles. Polyester and nylon, which account for around 60% of global textile production, shed tiny fibres throughout manufacturing, wear, and washing. These synthetic microfibers are now the most prevalent form of microplastic pollution, with an estimated volume entering oceans each year equivalent in weight to more than 50 billion plastic bottles. Once released, they are too small to recover.
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Nature, Climate
Engineering Nature’s Brilliance for a New Approach to Colour.
Colorifix is pioneering a new approach to textile dyeing by replacing toxic chemicals with biological processes. Its patented technology produces, deposits, and fixes colour onto fabrics entirely through microorganisms, eliminating the need for synthetic dyes, mordants, and heavy metals that cause severe environmental harm in conventional dyeing.
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Nature
Producing Exotic Leathers from Harmful Invasive Species
Invasive species are ecological and economic drivers of destruction, responsible for ~60% of today’s species extinctions and $400+ billion in annual damages worldwide. INVERSA tackles this crisis by managing these destructive non-native species and transforming them into high-performance leathers for the fashion industry.
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Nature, Climate
Clothes from Crop Harvest Waste.
Fibe is reimagining clothing by turning agricultural waste into high-performance, sustainable textiles. They have developed the world’s first fibre derived from potato stems and have since expanded their work to include a range of crop residues. All inputs are farm byproducts that typically have no value and are often burned, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
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Nature, Climate
Transforming Agricultural Waste into Mycelium-based Materials
In Indonesia, vast amounts of agricultural waste are burned every year – releasing greenhouse gases, polluting air, and depleting soil health. MYCL turns this problem into a regenerative opportunity, using mycelium, the root structure of fungi, to bind and transform crop residues into high-performance, biodegradable materials.
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Nature, Climate
Transforming Textile Waste into Fertiliser using Fabric Credits.
Fabricure turns the global textile waste crisis into a regenerative opportunity by transforming discarded clothing into a plantable soil amendment. Their proprietary process converts fabric waste into compost that enhances soil structure, improves water retention and boosts microbial activity. With this solution, Fabricure is helping geographies threatened by desertification and food insecurity to increase crop yields without relying on mineral fertilisers.
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Nature, Climate
Revolutionising Colour through Bio-based Dyes
SAGES is redefining textile colouration with bio-based dyes made from food waste, offering a sustainable alternative to the toxic petrochemical dyes that dominate today’s industry. Conventional synthetic dyes account for 20% of global wastewater and are derived from carbon-intensive petroleum and coal tar, releasing hazardous chemicals that kill marine life, damage soils, and contaminate the food chain and drinking supply.
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