In a bold effort to address the growing challenge of textile waste in landfills, the Bezos Earth Fund has awarded $10 million to research led by engineers and scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop biodegradable fibers that can rival the strength and flexibility of natural materials.
The UC Berkeley award is among several grants announced today by the Bezos Earth Fund to "advance breakthrough materials for the fashion and textile industry."
The characteristic turnover of clothing characterized by the rise of fast fashion in the 1990s has led to an unsustainable glut of textiles in landfills. A United Nations environment program report notes that 11% percent of plastic waste comes from clothing and textiles. Industry research estimates that 92 million tons of textile waste is generated worldwide every year, with the annual volume expected to rise to 134 million tons by the end of 2030.
"At the Bezos Earth Fund we're constantly looking for groundbreaking new solutions at the intersection of climate, nature, people and communities to ensure we're protecting and restoring the world we love," said Tom Taylor, CEO and president of the Bezos Earth Fund, in the announcement. "We believe sustainable fashion is part of that mission by making sustainable clothing choices easy, widely available, and ultimately better for the planet and for people."
Taking inspiration from the protein-based silk woven by spiders to make webs and egg sacs, UC Berkeley project lead Ting Xu proposed a "waste to weave" process whereby proteins extracted from compost and industrial waste could provide building blocks for biodegradable fibers.
"We're breaking down the fibers to the molecular level, to sequences of proteins, and those proteins can come from a number of surprising sources," said Xu, a UC Berkeley professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and of Chemistry. "For this project to be successful, multiple disciplines must come together, pushing scientists and engineers to think beyond our comfort zone."
The project team will include scientists from across six departments at UC Berkeley in addition to researchers at Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology. The researchers plan to take advantage of recent advances in nanomaterial synthesis along with new AI and machine learning models to map protein sequence features to desired material performance.
"We're delighted to partner with the Bezos Earth Fund to advance Ting Xu's research," said Vice Chancellor of Research Kathy Yelick. "This is a quintessential Berkeley project that uses a deep understanding of molecular processes applied to a societal challenge, creating a new cycle between waste and clothing."
Validation of the biodegradable fiber's performance will include six or more months of stability testing and at least 50 wash cycles to confirm durability.
"What the Bezos Earth Fund is supporting has the potential to have a lasting impact with benefits that go far beyond the fashion industry," said Xu. "It's really exciting."
