From making algae-sequin dresses, dyeing clothes with bacteria to planting trackable pigments in cotton, an emerging tide of technological innovations offers the fashion industry a chance to clean up its woeful environmental record.
Change is urgently needed, since the industry consumes 93 billion cubic meters of water per year, dumps 500,000 tonnes of plastic microfibers into the ocean, and accounts for 10 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The growing demands for change have generated ingenious responses, such as New York designer Charlotte McCurdy’s seaweed raincoat.
The shimmering algae-plastic she concocted in a lab made for a