EXCLUSIVE: Kering, Eileen Fisher, Johnstons of Elgin Board Spiber’s Circular Biosphere Project
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PARIS — Spiber is strengthening its web in the materials innovation space.
Kering’s Material Innovation Lab, brands Eileen Fisher Inc. and Johnstons of Elgin, as well as dye and chemical manufacturer DyStar are joining the Japanese biotechnology start-up’s biosphere circulation project. Spiber is researching how to process unused apparel, textiles and agricultural waste and turn them into new materials.
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They join ski brand Goldwin and sportswear brand Pangaia in participating in the project. The news was announced at Paris’ Biofabricate next generation materials conference.
The brands will supply sample material to Spiber, made of specific fiber mixes that will test and track how certain chemical and color treatments on materials react and break down in Spiber’s molecular fermentation process, and if they can be regenerated into new materials. They will also research textile blends, such as poly-cotton.
“We are working with the brands to actually test some of the materials they’re using to see if the dyes they use cause any problems for our circulation process, to test to see if certain blends of fibers have viable solutions for circularity,” Spiber executive vice president, sustainability Kenji Higashi told WWD.
Spiber has been using corn- and sugar-based food-grade feedstock for its Brewed Protein fiber, and successfully launched its first large-scale collection in fall 2023 after years of smaller collaborations.
The Japan-based company opened a plant that can produce large quantities in early 2022, and as it scales up, the company is looking for other impactful solutions that aren’t being taken out of the food chain. Agricultural waste is one; repurposing textile waste is another.
Natural, bio-based materials such as cotton or wool work in the Spiber breakdown process, but chemicals, dyes and synthetic blends are the variable.
“There’s a lot of challenges for scaling up,” said Higashi.
“To scale this into a real-world solution [we need to] actually be able to find enough of these waste materials and convert them at a scale that can actually supply our production,” he added.
Dyes and chemical treatments on the average garment reduce the efficiency of reusing textile waste, for example. The research aims to find what kinds of blends of materials have viable solutions for circularity, what kinds of chemicals and dyes work or make it less efficacious.
The results won’t be limited to boost Eileen Fisher or Kering’s stable of luxury brands; Spiber will create a database of their research to enable other brands have insight to textile and dye impacts at the design stage.
“Hopefully, they can start designing products that only use chemicals that are compatible with this process and only use fibers that are compatible with this process,” said Higashi, of making their data public to support Spiber’s ecosystem.
The company plans to launch the database before the end of 2024 with info about compatible materials, with ongoing research and development adding information along the way. The company published a guide for circular product design as an industry reference last year.
“We need all the tools in our toolbox in order to jointly move our industry forward towards circular economy for textiles. The biosphere circulation project looks at the fundamental principles of circularity at the level of building blocks of our materials, including dyes and finishes. It is a new yet essential approach to circularity,” said Eileen Fisher Inc. director of material sustainability and integrity Inka Apter.
While some brands such as Goldwin and The North Face have used Spiber on small or limited-edition projects, one of the main challenges to widespread use is bringing down the cost, which is roughly on par with cashmere, though it is dropping now that the production plant is online.
“If the waste streams are complicated blends of lots of different types of materials that are not designed to be broken down and reused, that makes it challenging to bring the cost down,” said Higashi.
The company has a five-year timeline for completing the research and putting into place the infrastructure to build a robust circular supply chain, then to onboard designers and companies in the next decade.
Designers also need to get up to speed on how to design products with materials that are compatible with circularity. The company is looking to bring on more brand partners, and Higashi said it is in conversation with a range from mass brands to luxury houses.
“To achieve a more circular textile industry, different multilevel approaches are necessary as well as validating and deploying different solutions. The biosphere circulation project is an ambitious and challenging initiative opening a new path to textile recycling. From being a last resort, recycling can become a new promising alternative for unusable textile materials,” said Kering Material Innovation Lab director Christian Tubito.
Kering has brought its supply chain partners to the table. Spiber is now working with some of Kering’s mills, which has accelerated its material development, and it recently opened its European headquarters in Paris in order to be closer to many of the luxury houses and mills.
Higashi was also clear the company’s position is that there needs to be a circular solution for each type of textile blend, and if not, lawmakers need to step in.
“In order to actually create a circular ecosystem for the industry, we need every slice of this [textile] pie to have a solution for circularity,” he said. “If any of these slices don’t have viable solutions, we need to ban or tax or find ways to move away from those ones.”
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