THE’industry textile is looking for alternatives to cotton to reduce the high impact environmental. The English start-up FIBE has developed a solution innovative extracting a fiber come on barrels of the plants of potatoesa toxic by-product that would otherwise be disposed of. Using a process biologicalthe fibers come transformed in soft and similar flakes cotton. Currently the yarn produced is mixedcomposed for the 75% cotton and the 25% potato fiberbut it is expected to increase its percentage. This approach not only reduces the scraps agricultural, but helps reduce cotton production and its environmental costs, offering the technology needed to develop greener fabrics and a new path to more sustainable fashion.
Why are alternatives to cotton being sought?
The fashion and textile industry generates a very high environmental impact in terms of resource consumption and polluting emissions; in 2020 in Europe the average consumption of textile products per capita It took an average of consumption of 9 cubic meters of water, 400 square meters of land and 391 kilograms of raw materials. Similarly, in the agri-food sector, many productions generate quantities of waste that must be disposed of, often with significant energy and economic costs.
According to the 6th Report on the Bioeconomy in Europe, in 2018 at European level the agri-food waste produced by the supply chain were equal to 87 million tons. For this reason, in recent years companies are being born that offer solutions innovative and interactions between the textile and agri-food sectors with a view to reducing consumption and valorising waste. This is the story of an English start-up that has managed to obtain from the vegetable residues of potato plants a textile fibre similar to cotton and an innovative and sustainable fabric.
Why potatoes can be a valid alternative
Potatoes are one of the crops agricultural most widespread in the world; just think that according to FAO data, in 2022 approximately 375 million tons of potatoeswith China and India as the main producers. The entire agri-food chain connected to this product generates approximately 150 million tons of waste per year. Several experiments are attempting to use potato peels as a raw material for biogas production, while starch is used in the textile industry as a sizing agent.
The aerial parts of the plant, stem and leaves, are rich in fibersbut they cannot be used for thediet of animals because they contain high concentrations of solaninethealkaloid extremely toxic produced by the metabolism of potato and other vegetables of the Solanaceae family. These plant parts must be destroyed and represent a cost for farmers and for the disposal system
How to make yarn from potato fibers
The English start-up FIBE has started extracting a textile fibre from barrels of potato plants. It all started thanks to a surprising intuition of a group of students from the faculty Of engineering of the‘Imperial College London and already in 2022 we moved from the experiment to the Enterprise. The fiber is obtained through a process biological of degradation so as to also reduce the use of substances chemical For the extraction.
Once extracted, the raw fibre is clean And worked to obtain soft flakes that are very similar to cotton. Currently the yarn used for processing fabrics is mixed, with a composition of 75% cotton and 25% potato to be able to adapt to existing machinery, but in the future it is planned improvements. The FIBE company has already received awards and grants for this interesting prototype, having been able to recover waste and, at the same time, reduce cotton production with the related environmental costs.
