A fashionable circular economy solution

The Australian fashion industry is known for the glitz and glam of fashion weeks and festivals. Meanwhile, some organisations are working hard behind the scenes to promote sustainability.

Western Australian start-up Uluu is developing a seaweed-based polymer pellet designed to mimic the properties of plastic.

Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials has partnered with Uluu’s project.

A statement from the university said textiles made from natural materials “have the potential to replace nylon or polyester in day-to-day clothing”.

(Image credit: Adobe Stock Images)

Associate Professor Christoper Hurren said using naturally sourced materials promotes sustainability.

“You’ve got a material derived from the sea which can be turned into a fibre that will break down at its end-of-life to go back into the soil where it can once again grow back into a fibre,” he said.

This material comes as the industry is looking towards a shift from linearity – where items are made, used and thrown away – to a circular economy.

Many fabrics and textiles contain plastics that shed microscopic particles known as microplastics every time a garment is washed, dried and worn.

These microplastics can enter local waterways and natural environments where they may take hundreds of years to break down.

Seamless Australia’s latest Environmental Impact Report revealed the Australian clothing value chain produced 14.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), with the average person responsible for producing around 530kg of greenhouse gases in 2024.

The report estimates this per person figure is equivalent to the emissions produced by driving more than 3,600 kilometres in a petrol car.

RMIT University released a guide called Refashioning: Accelerating Circular Product Design at Scale last year, which advises the Australian fashion industry how to transition to sustainable clothing business practice.

The guide covers aspects of the circular method from conceptualisation to design and then end-of-life, particularly as clothing consumption continues to accelerate as a result of fast-fashion and trend cycles.

Recent reporting by Torrens University Lecturer Dr Alicja Kuźmycz for The Conversation shows that the average person today owns an average of 199 garments compared to 40 garments 60 years ago, with 25 to 50 per cent of those clothes not actively being worn.

Polyester accounts for more than half of all global fibre production, according to an article by the Fashion Sustainability Directory, meaning the industry has to find an alternative material or increase the reuse and recycling of polyester garments to be sustainable.

Uluu co-founder Dr Julia Reisser says the process can create a material that behaves similarly to plastic by heating the Uluu filament and passing it through a spinneret to create a continuous fibre, like yarn.

“We’re hoping to replace plastic at scale with a material that delivers all the things we love about plastic, but at the end of its life we have the choice to reuse, recycle or compost the material,” Dr Reisser said.

While Australia’s fashion industry still has a long way to go in reducing its environmental footprint, grassroots projects like Uluu and RMIT’s Refashioning guide show that a more sustainable and circular system is possible.