Using Living Organisms As Raw Materials, Clothing, Environmental Protection And Fashion Still Need To Be Popularized.

When a garment is worn out or out of date, it is often thrown into the trash can.

(Environmental Protection Agency) data show that in 2014, all municipal solid waste generated in the United States,

Accounting for 9%.

Our abandoned clothes clogged up the landfill.

The European Commission also practices the modern clothing industry, which is linked to high energy and water consumption, serious greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution, because of the speed and quantity of clothing production and sales, often referred to as "fast fashion".

Now a small but growing number of innovators are turning.

In an attempt to eliminate the waste and pollution from fashion, from the source: they use living organisms in the laboratory to make biodegradable textiles and create environmentally-friendly materials, which can even produce near finished products without even requiring factory assembly.

Many of the costumes today are

It is made of nylon or polyester thread and cut and sewn in the factory.

All these materials are chemical products and are not biodegradable.

But these researchers believe that some of the clothes in the future may be bioengineered, which are made from living bacteria, algae, yeast, animal cells or fungi. When they are finally discarded, they will be decomposed into non-toxic substances.

Theanne Schiros, an assistant professor of mathematics and science at Fashion Institute of Technology/F.I.T., New York, says such a way can reduce waste and pollution.

In addition to biodegradability, she says, another main advantage is that many of the organisms involved can grow to the degree of material required for the clothing model -- the exact number needed to produce a garment.

Instead of producing extra disposable materials.

"In material science, we are finding more and more inspiration in nature by finding a lot of fast propagating organisms from nature," she said.

The organisms chosen by Schiros are algae.

With it, she and a team of F.I.T. students and teachers created a yarn similar to yarn, which can be dyed with non chemical pigments, such as broken insects, and woven into garments.

Schiros says there are three steps to produce algal yarns: first, a sugar called alginate is extracted from seaweed - alginate is a multicellular algae - and sprinkled with powder.

The alginate powder is then converted into a hydrogel and added to the plant's color (e.g. carrot juice).

Finally, the gel is stretched to form a strip of fibers that can be woven into fabric.

Schiros said her experiments showed that

As a market prospect bioengineering garment material, it has strong flexibility, which is the two basic characteristics of popular clothing.

Chinese materials scientists point out that algal fibers have natural fire resistance and may reduce the need to add toxic flame-retardant to clothing.

Moreover, the speed of algae degradation is faster than that of cotton (the most common natural clothing material), and its growth does not require pesticides or large area of land.

Schiros knitted her clothes with her fiber, including her vest worn in TED's lecture on sustainable fashion themes this year.

Schiros and her colleagues at F.I.T.'s Asta Skocir won the championship of biological design challenge in 2016.

Later, she co founded a company called Algiknit, hoping that one day she could produce clothes using algae as raw materials on a commercial scale.

Schiros has also explored the use of bacteria to make clothing materials. In 2017, some of her students developed a pair of baby sized leather shoes with liquid bacterial cultures, fungi and degradable refuse.

The bacteria grew into a fibrous "biological leather" cushion, and finally filled with a shoe mold, forming a complete pair of shoes.

Later, they used the avocado seeds and indigo leaves to dye their shoes, and put carrot seeds in their shoes and dried them.

According to Schiros's point of view, "this method avoids waste in the production stage."

She added that because these shoes are degradable and contain seeds, "when your children grow up and shoes do not fit, you can put them in the ground and start preparing for the next pair of shoes."

Her students (self proclaimed "GROWAPAIR team") presented their ideas for the first time in last year's Biodesign challenge summit.

The Biodesign challenge summit is a bioengineering competition for university students. It is held at Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York.

Schiros said that another fast fashion environmental problem that bioengineering can solve is dye.

According to the Swedish chemicals Agency, about 3500 kinds of man-made chemicals are used in commercial textile printing and dyeing, including lead and petroleum based substances.

The Bureau found 2400 kinds of man-made chemicals in the finished products.

The agency said that 5% of the chemicals found were potentially hazardous to the environment, and 10% of the 2400 chemicals found in the finished garments could be harmful to human health.

These dyes that are attached to fabrics usually require toxic solvents, hardener, salt and a large amount of water.

Laboratory animals exposed to these dyes exhibit unhealthy health effects, including allergic reactions and reproductive and growth problems.

The EPA announced that a common dye dye benzidine and its derivatives were "reasonably presumed to be human carcinogens".

The European Union forbids the import of dyes containing this substance and other so-called azo dyes.

These chemicals may penetrate into the skin from clothing and will also be found in wastewater from textile dyestuff factories, which are usually discharged directly into the environment without treatment.

Some researchers believe that bacteria may also help lighten the dye problem.

Innovators including Cecilia Raspanti, co-founder of TextileLab Amsterdam, Laura Luchtman of textile and design studio Kukka, biology design laboratory and the founder of Faber Futures, Natsai Audrey Audrey, are using natural pigment bacteria to stain natural and bioengineering textiles.

Luchtman said that her process involves autoclaving to prevent contamination, and then pour liquid filled culture media filled with bacterial nutrients into a container of textiles.

Next, she exposed the soaked textiles to the bacteria and placed them in the temperature control room for three days.

Finally, she disinfected the textiles, washed them with mild detergent, washed the smell of the bacterial medium, and dried them.

Chieza said that bacterial dyes can be applied to all kinds of colors and patterns, non-toxic, and the required moisture is reduced by at least 20%.

However, the use of this technology to replace textiles made from non biodegradable synthetic fibers and dyestuffs made of problematic chemicals remains a major challenge.

Schiros said it is a major obstacle to produce bioengineering materials that are sufficient to withstand normal wear and tear.

She tried to overcome this problem, using local preservation techniques to process some of her textiles, such as smoked instead of chemicals, which made her biological leather stronger and more resistant to water.

So far, these harmless and eco-friendly textiles are mainly confined to laboratories, scientific competitions and high fashion T.

But the promotion of these innovative researchers said that these innovations in some form to the consumer market is only a matter of time.

Chieza said the first problem to be solved is to make the cost of bioengineering clothing equal to that of traditional clothing.

For example, Luchtman sells bacterial colored scarves at a price of $139, while similar traditional dyeing scarves are priced at only $10.

"Similar to the debate surrounding renewable energy, cost competition not only depends on reliable science and effective technology, but also needs to be realized through government subsidies and spiritual pformation to R & D investment," Chieza said.

Melik Demirel, director of the CRAFT and Pennsylvania State University, agrees that it may take some time for the bio design clothing to enter the consumer market. "Pennsylvania"

But he said that if the production process can be expanded, its advantages will exceed challenges.

"Protein or sugar based fibers are naturally degradable and can be recycled in nature," he pointed out.

In addition, designers who supported the study said that textiles could be reused before being sent to the composting facilities for biodegradation.

Over and over, repairing or reusing textiles and dyes can slow them down to waste, and are the main principles guiding the production of non chemical dyes for biological textiles and for dyeing.

Suzanne Lee is the founder of the annual Biodesign summit Biofabricate and also the founder of a London based Biodesign consulting firm called Biocouture.

"If you want fast fashion to last, the materials you use must start to be recycled and become the raw materials for the fashion sector," Lee said.

"In the design process, they should not be doomed to be thrown into landfills. All of us, especially designers, should strive for this change.