Agraloop aims to boost farmer incomes while cutting your wardrobe’s carbon footprint
Consumers, food businesses, and policymakers are increasingly aware of the need to improve our food system’s impact on the environment. But what about the impact of the clothes we wear – another major product of agriculture?
Roughly 20% of industrial water pollution comes from garment manufacturing, according to the World Resources Institute, and the industry uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water each year to dye fabric alone. This is enough to fill 2 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
For one startup tackling the textile industry, the carbon footprint of your closet is just as important as the carbon footprint of your grocery list.
“[Ours] is a new and novel biorefinery process. All the energy and biochemistry required to run the mill has a beneficial impact, and all of it is generated from the plant waste,” Circular Systems CEO Isaac Nichelson tells AFN.
“There’s a big hole in the processing of natural fibers in that the fiber is great, but the processing creates a bunch of effluents with nowhere to go. They either build up caustic salts in landfills that leach into the water table, or go out the back of the factory into a river.”
Los Angeles-based Circular Systems has developed what it describes as a completely closed-loop system for textile production. Taking top prize at the 2018 H&M Global Change Award, the system is the brainchild of a few seasoned professionals from various supply chain points of textile production, which each boast more than 25 years experience in their respective fields, Nichelson says.
