Banana, milk and mushroom are the ingredients of your future wardrobe

USING existing resources to create clothing: this is one of the challenges facing the fashion industry as it attempts to reduce its environmental impact.

And the food industry is proving to be a source full of waste products such as milk and bananas that are turning out to be useful as creators look to developing textile materials of the future.

On the occasion of Earth Day which was on Saturday April 22, we take a look at the fruits, vegetables and other ingredients that will soon go from your plate to your closet

Bananas, mushrooms, apples, beets, oranges, lemons and pineapple...

The list looks like it might be the ingredients of a vegan meal, but it's not. As the climate crisis intensifies, the fashion industry is looking for natural, more sustainable solutions for creating and dyeing the clothes we'll be wearing tomorrow.

And while some players are turning to electronic waste or marine waste collected on beaches and in the oceans, many see in the waste of the food industry a 'cleaner' way to create clothing without causing (too much more) harm to the planet.

Here are three ingredients from your garbage or the natural environment that could be a new resource for the textile industry.

Bananas

Natural, sustainable, resistant, and regenerative; banana fiber has been attracting the interest of several fashion players for several years now for its many qualities.

Spanish company Pyratex now includes it in its range of natural materials; it's appreciated for loaning itself to sustainable, organic cultivation methods, without necessitating pesticides or excess water other than rain.

The company has collaborated with Danish brand Ganni on a collection made from banana fiber.

Meanwhile Bananatex specializes in banana fiber, developing a sustainable technical fabric of the same name made from Abacá banana trees grown naturally in the Philippines.

The material, which has won numerous awards and certification, is already being used by a number of ready-to-wear brands, including H&M and Tommy Hilfiger, and could quickly become a fixture in our wardrobes.

Expired milk

Not everyone's a fan of milk, but what about expired milk? If it's not fit for human consumption, the fashion industry is very interested in it. The reason? Fibers made from casein, milk protein, could also soon be in our wardrobes.

And as surprising as it may seem, this is nothing new. The process was first developed during the interwar periods by an Italian chemist and engineer to come up with a replacement for wool.

The idea was to take expired milk and transform it into a natural, biodegradable textile.

Today, one of the best known examples throughout the world is the QMilk textile, created by German entrepreneur Anke Domaske, who was looking for natural fibers for her father-in-law who was suffering from cancer.

Many brands have already taken the plunge, such as Germaine des Prés, which offers underwear and sleepwear made of milk fiber, guaranteed antibacterial and 100% biodegradable.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms seem to be everywhere you turn, no matter the sector; in fashion mushrooms are being touted as the latest must-have ingredient that could cure all the ills of the industry or just about.

As early as 2020, a team of researchers from the University of Vienna, Imperial College London, and RMIT University in Australia, were already extolling the virtues of mushroom-based materials, explaining that they were carbon neutral and biodegradable.

Today, several start-ups are working on such fabrics, with properties very similar to leather. Examples include MycoWorks and its Fine Mycelium, Bolt Threads Inc. and its Mylo in the United States, as well as Fungus Sapiens and its MÆLIUM in France.

These innovative materials are a hit in the textile industry, having already found numerous real-world uses at Stella McCartney, adidas, and Lululemon, but they are also of interest to the aeronautics and automotive industries.