Prestigious fashion industry award also honours Imperial startup PulpaTronics, for its low-cost, recyclable radio-frequency ID tags.
Two teams with Imperial connections are among the winners of this year's H&M Global Change Awards, which represent a major vote of confidence from the fashion industry. In addition to €200,000 each in financial support, the winners gain access to a powerful network of mentors, collaborators and industry leaders to help bring their solutions to life.
This year's winners are not just solving problems; they're rethinking the systems behind them. Annie Lindmark Programme Director, H&M Foundation
"This year's winners are not just solving problems; they're rethinking the systems behind them," said Annie Lindmark, Programme Director at the H&M Foundation. "Their ideas reflect the kind of early-stage innovation we need to unlock system-level change, and remind us that transformation starts with brave, often uncertain steps."
Brilliant Dyes, a spinout under formation at Imperial, won its award for natural dyes it is developing from algae. This involves an innovative low-energy extraction process that will make them a more sustainable option than synthetic dyes.
"Growing up in Dhaka, I saw first-hand how synthetic dyes turned our rivers toxic and made the air nearly unbreathable," said Mohammad Redwanur Rahman, a PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering and one of the inventors of the technology.
"That experience shaped everything," he went on. "Our algae-based dyes offer a carbon-negative alternative. They capture CO₂ as they grow and eliminate the need for sugar or fossil feedstocks. It's a way to clean up one of the dirtiest parts of fashion, using something as simple and powerful as algae."
This approach has the potential to cut the carbon footprint of synthetic indigo dye sector by around 50%, with the added benefit that the resulting dyes are non-toxic and biodegradable.
Looking good
This pitch appealed to the award judges at the H&M Foundation, who singled out the cost effectiveness of the production method, which will make this natural dye more affordable and accessible that other alternatives. Meanwhile, the closed-loop extraction process means there will be no solvent waste, and the algae material left behind can be used as fertiliser, biofuel and animal feed.
Wider benefits include the potential to support small industry and local economies through algae cultivation, and to address the skin diseases caused by the environmental pollution from synthetic dyes.
Mr Redwanur Rahman is in the process of setting up Brilliant Dyes together with co-founders Dr Md Tabish Noori, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Professor Klaus Hellgardt, who is supervising his PhD.
The team is also working on strengthening industrial and academic collaborations in order to carry out more research and development on the colourfastness of the dyes, and using computational modelling to prepare the technique for commercialisation. Other priorities include securing funding for pilot-scale dye extraction and expanding the team to explore high-end textile applications.
Winning the Global Change Award is a huge validation of our mission to replace toxic synthetic dyes with a cleaner, scalable alternative. Dr Md Tabish Noori Brilliant Dyes
"Winning the Global Change Award is a huge validation of our mission to replace toxic synthetic dyes with a cleaner, scalable alternative," said Dr Noori. "With the H&M Foundation's support, we can strengthen our core business understanding of fashion industries, build industry collaborations and fast-track consumer validation, bringing us closer to delivering affordable, sustainable dyes to the global textile supply chain.
"Brilliant Dyes is a great example of a dozen new, exciting spinouts in the pipeline of ChemEng Enterprise, the highly successful decentralised enterprise support programme in the Department of Chemical Engineering," said Professor Sandro Macchietto, the department's Director of Enterprise.
Labelled for success
PulpaTronics' innovation is aimed at the retail section of the fashion industry. It has devised an all-paper radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag that is cheaper to make than the plastic, paper and metal composites currently attached to most new clothing, and which can be dropped in a regular recycling bin once they have served their purpose.
The idea came to company co-founders Chloe So and Barna Soma Biro during a group project for the Master's programme in Innovation Design Engineering, run jointly by Imperial and the Royal College of Art. Together with two colleagues from the course they then entered the 2023 Venture Catalyst Challenge, Imperial's flagship entrepreneurial competition, going on to win the Creative and Consumer track prize.
After that, the startup participated in The Greenhouse, Undaunted's climate accelerator. And last year it raised £430,000 in pre-seed funding to accelerate product development and launch its first pilot studies with leading retail and packaging companies. This includes winning a pilot with low-cost airline Vueling through its NextGen Aviation Challenge.
The staggering volume of unnecessary e-waste generated by these RFID tags is an urgent crisis that can't be ignored. Dr Chloe So PulpaTronics
"Winning this award will allow us to automate more of our production manufacturing, as well as accelerate our R&D around alternative substrates like bioplastics," says Ms So.
It will also raise awareness of the challenge that PulpaTronics is addressing and help convince more retail brands that the time for change is now.
"The staggering volume of unnecessary e-waste generated by these RFID tags is an urgent crisis that can't be ignored," she says. "Having the support from the H&M Foundation to accelerate our R&D towards commercialisation shows that the fashion industry is ready to stand with us to lead the charge toward meaningful change."
Changemakers
The Global Change Awards are intended to support bold, early-stage innovations that can decarbonise fashion and drive industry-wide transformation. Past winners from Imperial include DyeRecyle, a startup that has developed a dye recycling technology that cuts water use, reduces the chance of water pollution and builds recycling. And Algreen, which has developed a biobased polyurethane made from sustainable algae. Both collected Global Change Awards in 2023.
This year's competition attracted 476 ideas from 69 countries across six continents. These were narrowed down to a shortlist of 20 finalists. Brilliant Dyes and PulpaTronics were not the only teams on the shortlist with connections to Imperial.
Also featured were Tera Mira, which is working on a biobased alternative to elastane, harnessing the power of seaweed cultivation, and Sequinova, which is developing biodegradable replacements for traditional plastic sequins.
This recognition reinforces the strength of our ecosystem in backing pioneering science, scalable solutions, and visionary founders. Alyssa Gilbert Director, Undaunted
As well as winning Global Change Awards, all the companies in this article have a shared connection as alumni of The Greenhouse. The team behind Brilliant Dyes is following suit, having recently joined the Greenhouse's eighth cohort.
"This recognition reinforces the strength of our ecosystem in backing pioneering science, scalable solutions, and visionary founders driving real change in one of the world's most resource-intensive sectors," said Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Undaunted.
"We can't wait to see these startups evolve with the invaluable recognition and financial support that the awards provide. We also hope to see barriers to adoption decrease at pace for these game-changing innovations, so vital to our future on this planet."
