Business

FIBRAL™ Material Alliance Set Up For Plant-Based Textile Industry

To consolidate and provide a home for the plant-based textile industry, Ananas Anam, Bananatex and Circular Systems have founded the FIBRAL™ Material Alliance. The FIBRAL Material Alliance is an international organisation established by three founders: Dr Carmen Hijosa from Ananas Anam, Hannes Schoenegger from Bananatex® and Ricardo Garay of Regenerate Fashion. It exists to bring together companies and individuals working with ancient underrepresented and new plant-based fibres to give a strong voice, and to help provide a solution to the textile crisis. The textile industry is dominated by a material mix that relies on fossil-based resources or fibres that are associated with intensive water, chemical and land use. In the face of global climate change, there is a growing need for alternative materials as the Earth’s finite resources diminish and natural systems continue to degrade. The Fibral™ Material Alliance seeks to align plant-based fibres under a common umbrella to provide support and to foster solutions to heal Earth’s ecosystems and address the textile industry’s detrimental impacts through increasing use of Fibral™ Materials. These natural materials are derived from precious renewable resources, such as abaca, pineapple leaves, oilseed flax/hemp, novel agricultural wastes, and by-products. But, despite evolutions within the textile industry over the last decade, the benefits of natural fibres have been overlooked in favour of the readily available and defined biosynthetic materials and manmade cellulosics. FIBRAL looks to change this and bring forward the next paradigm of materials. Carmen Hijosa says, “FIBRAL™ is the result of a fellowship of like-minded individuals whose vision, work and life purpose is to inspire change by bringing awareness to plant-based fibres, regenerative systems, local and indigenous communities and culture, and the importance of biodiversity. With this alliance we wish to activate a sense of community, sharing and collaborating by focussing on plant-based solutions, in particular the potential of underrepresented fibres in the marketplace – today”.