With fashion’s carbon footprint recently estimated at roughly 2% of the total global footprint, converting greenhouse gases into textiles sounds like the holy grail in terms of reducing the industry’s impact on climate change.
However, a handful but increasing number of companies are trying to do exactly that. Chicago-based LanzaTech made headlines last year by working with Zara and Lululemon to make garments from captured steel mill emissions.
Another startup, Rubi Laboratories from San Francisco, recently raised US$4.5 million in a successful seed funding round to develop its method of producing cellulose from CO2.