MTI Framework

Motivation: In the 21st century, it is not that hard to contact people we are interested in, as the Internet greatly facilitates our communication. However, to ensure that we value the quality of our human practices more than quantity, we identify the motivation of the activity and clarify the purpose of implementing it. This prevents us from spending time establishing irrelevant associations.

Two-way Communication: Gaining is a significant part of integrated human practices. However, gaining never exists without giving. To give our stakeholders a clear understanding of our project and efficiently pass our prior values to the world, we always adopt two-way communication in our human practices activities. Human practice is never a unilateral impartation.

Improvement: Based on the feedback we obtained from our communication, we integrated the suggestions from our stakeholders into a range of aspects of our project. In such a way, our project serves entirely to give the best, the most responsible solution for the practical world. After improvements on our project, the cycle starts again naturally to further adapt and improve our solution.

Understanding the Problem

Fashion is an indispensable aspect of our life and growing industry. However, an underlying problem caused by the fashion industry is overlooked—the textile waste created by both the cut-and-sew process and the fashion consumers, that is, you and me. Approximately 92 million tonnes of textile waste is produced globally every year, with only a meager 12% getting recycled, and the rest being buried or burned (Beall). Witnessing the detrimental effects this problem exerts on our planet, we decide that it is not an "if" but a "must" to solve this problem.

Fashion Industry at the First Glimpse

To thoroughly understand the current situation of the global fast fashion industry, we did abundant preliminary research online to obtain secondary data. However, the inconsistency of online information made us skeptical about the reliability of these sources. Therefore, we decided to conduct primary research and get access to first-hand information regarding the fast fashion market. Having this goal in mind, we reached out to several fast fashion brands and received positive responses from MO&Co., a fashion brand founded by EPO targeting the younger generation as the main customer group.

We visited Mo&Co's fashion studio in Guangzhou and arranged a meeting with two managers to conduct an in-depth interview with them. We gave them a short presentation summarizing the core concept of our project to provide our interviewees with more related information.

During the interview, the managers admitted that it is virtually impossible for profit-oriented fashion brands to alter their business mode entirely and use only degradable biomaterials. The highest priority of companies is always to generate capital, and there are many more factors other than the environment that need to be taken into account when choosing cloth materials. Consequently, companies often have to balance aesthetic, cost, and environmental friendliness. “Being entirely environmental-friendly is way too ideal for a fashion brand. There is no utter environmentalist when it comes to fashion”, concluded the manager.

The words of Mo&Co's managers made us realize that there is still a long way to go to fully promote sustainability in fashion companies and that it is difficult at this stage for them to balance between sustainable production and profit incentives. The fashion industry, along with a rapid increase in textile consumption and production, marks the world's economic growth and societal development. Therefore, although brands worldwide have developed some sustainable agenda, the gesture cannot ease the urgency and cover the massive amount of textile waste. While brands are starting to have more environmentally conscious means, we need better recycling strategies to fulfill the chain of production and consumptionsee sustainable

Unveiling the Problem of Unsustainable Fashion

After communicating with MO&Co., we decided to further investigate different routes we can take to cope with the problem of textile waste. We immediately contacted Mr. Edwin Keh when we learned about him online. Mr. Keh is the CEO of The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA). HKRITA's vision is "to be the leading center of excellence in research, development, and technology transfer in the fashion and textile industry." Our project also aims to make the fashion industry more sustainable. Therefore, we reached out to Mr. Keh, wanting to know more about the problem behind the textile and fashion industry and how our project can tackle some of those issues accordingly.

We gave a concise explanation of our project, including our research of the problems we found in the fast fashion industry and the outline of our experiment to Mr. Keh.

Mr. Keh summarized the problems in the fast fashion industry, including the excessive production volume, the staggering speed at which the industry is growing, people's lack of awareness, and the environmental impacts.

Mr. Keh explained that although people are using scientific search to solve this environmental problem, textile wastage is a social problem. He elaborated on several reasons for the increasing consumption and production of clothes. For example, he explains that consumers are "lured" by successful marketing to consume more garments, viewing clothes as consumable and disposable rather than durable. Their demand for clothing further encourages the fashion industry to produce more.

He encourages us to start by creating awareness of the wastage issue in fashion in the people around us, creating a better mindset that directs people to think more thoroughly about the social cost buying excessive clothes will bring to society rather than only thinking about the appearance of the clothes when deciding whether they should make another purchase. Our conversation with Mr. Keh has greatly inspired our efforts to educate the public about textile waste.

Fig.2 Laughters during discussion with Mr. Keh

Approaching Social Attitudes

Questionnaires

We started a questionnaire on Fast Fashion and Textile Recycling, aiming to know the perspective of the people around us about the real problems of fast fashion, to verify if people would accept our biological method of solving textile waste, and to take the first step to solve the misconception of textile recycling. This is the first step to diagnosing the population around us to know their current view of fashion and awareness of textile usage, which would also allow us to brainstorm education in the future.

Methodology

To diagnose the problem, we constructed an elaborate questionnaire open to the public through opportunity sampling while trying to spread the questionnaire as far as possible and to as many people as possible. The questionnaire had 17 questions. The questionnaire consisted of both close-ended and open-ended questions, including basic information, as well as a series of questions on the problems of fast fashion, public knowledge of textile recycling and biological treatments, public awareness of the circular textile economy, and effects caused by the environment by the current textile industry. A total of 586 people were surveyed.

Human Ethics

We were fully aware of ethical issues when conducting the public questionnaires. We avoided problems in research that raised concerns about the welfare of participants at all costs. Therefore, we closely followed ethical guidelines to consider the welfare of participants and broader society.

Results

After the questionnaire, we analyzed the 17 questions resulting in a final data report in the following PDF.

The questionnaires: https://static.igem.wiki/teams/4275/wiki/ihp/questionnaire-data-and-diagrams.pdf

Open-ended feedbacks

The open-ended feedback session gave us significant insights into people's thoughts and misconceptions about textile recycling.

• No. 187: “Is it possible to promote some ways for recycling clothes to the public?”
• No. 266: “Zara and H&M's environmentally friendly clothes are very good. I hope more local Chinese brands will introduce environmentally friendly clothes.”
• No. 312: “As long as the material of clothes is harmless to the human body, personally I pay more attention to style and comfort, and I also support textile recycling.”
• No. 445: “No matter clothes or any other commodities, they should not be overproduced or purchased. It is everyone's responsibility to reduce the waste and pollution of raw materials and protect the earth, starting from you and me.”
• No. 464: “Some community recycling bins are not put by non-profit organizations, but by some organizations that pack old clothes and sell them to Africa to make money, usually selling them in tons. the main reason I don't really want to put recycling bins is that, in the spirit of doing charity, my donation is eventually being taken for profit.”
• No. 557: “I think it is too difficult to implement this kind of clothes unless the price of the technology is reduced, and the clothes made of environment-friendly materials are almost the same as ordinary clothes. Normal people pay attention to the price. Only the upper and middle class or the upper class will care, but how many people in the upper and middle class and how many people will have the idea of environmental protection? Personally, this technology will take a long time.”
• No. 564: “Although some people still can't accept and understand T-shirts that are more expensive than usual, it will take time for everyone to understand them.”

Cross analysis

In the question asking what people would do with old clothes, 28% said they would discard them directly; 39.2% said they would keep them at home. This fits our preliminary research and informs us that many textiles are still being stored or thrown away. From this, we realized the need to educate the public about other more sustainable ways of dealing with old clothes, such as recycling.

Along the way of the questionnaire, we informed participants about the definition of fast fashion, the statistical impacts of the unsustainable textile industry, and the importance of consumer decisions to the overproduction of clothing. We asked participants whether they would think twice the next time they buy clothes. Almost 50% of participants answered "maybe," and 20.3 % answered "not really." From the percentage, we saw the necessity to educate the public further. We proposed using more powerful and convincing facts and statistics to reveal the urgency of reforming the consumers' perception of clothing purchases.

After informing participants of the current textile recycling methods around us, nearly half of the participants still picked "it depends" or "no" when we asked if they would prefer to recycle old textiles in the future. Of those people, 60.4% thought it sounded too inconvenient. This could be solved by increasing community recycling bins and the convenience of online recycling platforms where collectors can come to one's house to collect unwanted textiles. However, people need to agree with this mindset to carry out advancements. Furthermore, 20.8% of those participants don't believe in the significance of recycling clothes.

Moreover, 33.3% of people don't know where recycling bins are or which platforms there are. Similarly, one of the participants asked, "Is it possible to promote some ways for recycling clothes to the public?" From this, we realized the lack of general education on textile recycling and that there is still a long way to go to promote the field to every citizen.

To tackle the above problems, we started to implement various strategies to educate more people about the local textile recycling industry, the current advantages and disadvantages of textile recycling, and the impacts of the unorganized clothing industry. For example, "No matter clothes or other commodities, they should not be overproduced or purchased. Everyone is responsible for reducing the waste and pollution of raw materials and protecting the earth, starting from you and me." One of the questionnaire participants said so; we agreed with this statement wholeheartedly. However, we also realized we needed a more profound understanding of the whole textile recycling process. Therefore, we started to look for textile recycling companies and professionals in the circular economy.

The last session of our questionnaire is about inquiring people about their perceptions of microbial methods if we were to use synthetic biology and microbes to recycle and degrade textile waste. Many people (67.9%) reflected that they are worried about harm to the health of the microbial method/material; 66.1% worried about unsanitary. This feedback is inspiring as we realize most ordinary people are unfamiliar with the concept and have misconceptions. We saw the importance of tackling these biased opinions to promote our project further. A participant shared with us: "As long as the material of clothes is harmless to the human body, I pay more attention to style and comfort, and I also support textile recycling." This finding further inspired us to educate the public on synthetic biology in general. We started brainstorming methods to achieve this goal through social media, videos, lectures, and exhibitions.

Next step - wanting to get more thorough, detailed, and personalized responses to questions regarding the public perception of textile recycling, we started to plan for a random street interview…

Evaluation

The results show that most of our participants (74.23%) are female, which is not entirely representative of the population. We wished the participants to be evenly split into males and females. This could be one of the improvements we could make, as females and males might have different viewpoints.

Public interviews

Due to the difference in the distribution of people, sometimes the responses online may differ from that offline. How well does the public comprehend the problem of textile waste according to their perception? To get a more realistic measure of the current time, we conducted a street interview in Coco Park, Shenzhen.

We interviewed random passengers with the questions below, and got diverse answers from 17 interviewees from different genders, age groups, and nationalities.

The answers to the first question 'guess the percentage of clothes recycled and reused in China' are various, ranging from less than 5%to 100%. While the answer according to our research is 20%, the most frequent response from our interviewees was 10%. This indicates the awareness of low recycling rate is present, though not yet fully popularized. When sharing the ways they deal with their unwanted clothes, a popular answer given by the interviewees was passing them to relatives and friends. This clothes recycling method, depending on relationships, might have grown out of the large population locally. Whereas most clothes discarded out of the relationship circle were given to recycling sites such as recollection bins around the community or recollecting activities held by clothes stores, suggesting that the interviewees have the intention to recycle clothes instead of just treating them as general garbage. However, when being asked where the clothes from recollection bins will go, intuitively, many of our interviewees answered poor areas and donations for children. The confounding of charity and recycling was widespread, due to oversimplified or imprecise advertising. Some would even stand against putting clothes into recollection bins because of the exporting and reselling behaviors of organizations that set up recollection bins. Making a profit from collecting second-hand clothes using charity bins is considered deception, which has also been shown in response No.464 to open answered questions in our public questionnaire. We pumped a question following the understanding of recollection bins, asking whether or not the interviewee agreed with the reusing, remanufacturing, and exporting of clothes collected. Most answered that they support the environmentally friendly reuse of clothes and agree with re-manufacturing them as long as clothes donors have been informed of the use of their clothes donated. The disagreements we got were respectfully caused by the thoughts of reselling second-hand clothes would be outdated and that making profits from donations is unethical.

Student-produced Documentary

The results of our public questionnaires and interviews have shown that though some were aware of the environmental impact of textile waste, still some among people did not have a clear knowledge of this major source of waste and had no cognition of the process thrown away clothes will go through. There is a delay in recognizing the fact that ‘poor areas’ is not the end result of second-hand clothes anymore, and that more effective ways to convert textiles into other matters are in urgent need. Thus, we decided to create an original documentary to discuss topics we have encountered along our Human Practices progression. In the first episode of this documentary, we integrated the feedback we received from interviews on the street, experts in the fashion industry and the textile recycling industry, and vividly revealed the underlying nightmare behind fashion, raising public awareness of the problem of textile waste.

Documentary Episode 1: Integrating feedback we received from interviews on the street, experts in the fashion industry and the textile recycling industry, we vividly revealed the underlying nightmare behind fashion, raising public awareness of the problem of textile waste.

Defining A Good Solution

Based on our research and conversations with experts in the fashion industry chain, we concluded that waste textile is a pressing and far-reaching problem. Therefore, by incorporating and weighing voices from different stakeholders, we decided that our solution should aim to:

• Establish an upcycling process
• Have no hazard to the environment itself
• Form a closed loop within the fashion industry
• Raise social awareness

Starting with Incineration and Landfill Sites

According to Mr. Keh, the existing unsustainable recycling process is one of the major factors that leads to such terrifying amounts of textile waste. However, Mr. Keh could not provide us with any detailed information regarding the down-cycling process and how we can improve it, as HKRITA is not focused on such a field. Thus, we decided to reach out to more stakeholders to seek the answer.

At first, we attempted to seek the answer from the Internet. However, useful as the Internet is, we found results from different sources inconsistent with each other. Trying to unveil the truth about the existing recycling process, we decided to visit incineration and landfill sites by ourselves, as they are the last place we could backtrack where unwanted clothes end up.

We visited Likeng Incineration Factory and Xingfeng Landfill Site in Guangzhou, the largest incineration and landfill sites in the province. The workers there told us they deal with rags and scattered pieces of cloth. However, they seldom receive unwanted clothes as there are specialized businesses at the waste transfer station that buy unwanted clothes intentionally and handle them. This new thing, the "waste transfer station," shocked us, taking off a corner of the veil, but curiosity drove us even further.

We wanted to know more about the "specialized businessess" mentioned by the incineration and landfill sites. Due to the COVID situation, we were unable to visit the waste transfer stations around us, so we contacted several of them through phone calls. In the calls, plenty of workers mentioned that it is the textile recycling factory that purchases unwanted clothes from the stations on a regular basis. This helped us approach the truth again. Nevertheless, the managers claimed that they could not provide any contact information about the textile recycling factories either because they were not the manager and thus did not have it or due to privacy issues.

Communications with incineration and landfill sites were vital to our exploration of the mysterious recycling chain as it introduced us to the waste transfer stations and the textile recycling factories. They led us naturally to our next step, contacting a textile recycling factory.

Fig.3 A glimpse at the incineration site

Exploring the Down-cycling Chain with Mr. Wang

Without hesitation, we started our first attempt to contact a textile recycling factory as told by the waste transfer stations. We cast our focus on Shandong ChuangXinYi Renewable Resources Co., LTD, the largest and most impactful conventional textile recycling company in China. After failing to contact workers from this company through either phone call or WeChat, Director Wu, who has interviewed this company, gladly and kindly connected us with the CEO of ChuangXinYi, Mr. Wang.

We visited one of his factories in Dongguan. Not only did we finally see the enormous amount of unwanted clothes in person, but we also realized that a complex network was running behind textile waste. Mr. Wang told us about the complex network in detail. "Unwanted clothes, purchased from individuals, recycling bins, or waste transfer stations, are first transferred to clothes-sorting factories, where unwanted clothes are sorted by their material, extent of usage, seasonality. After sorting, different types of clothes are transported to either exporting factory or manufacturing factory. At the exporting factory, unwanted clothes that meet the exporting standards are being washed, sterilized and exported to countries in Africa or Southeast Asia. At the manufacturing factory, unwanted textiles are being smashed and made into recycling products."

Mr. Wang told us that the problem is actually the down-cycling process at the manufacturing factory. Textiles are made into low-quality rags at the factory, which would end up in incineration or landfill sites as they cannot be smashed and reused again. Such low-quality rags are given a name, "black rag", as many of them turn darker in color in the process of smashing and rejoining. The description of the existing down-cycling process greatly helped us to define a good solution and to narrow the focus of our project —— introducing an up-cycling approach.

While talking with Mr. Wang, he emphasized his interest in our project and said he could do anything to support us within his capability. Besides personally confirming the significance of our project, he mentioned that the government has been establishing more policies to support the development of the textile recycling industry in these years. It used to be an underground industry associated with legal concerns, but now the government encourages standardization, transparency, and integration. Therefore, it was confirmed that our project would likely be well supported by the government, grounding our later consideration on the proposed implementation.

After going to Mr. Wang's recycling factory in Dongguan to learn about the complicated network in person, we decided to invite him to our lab to have a deeper insight into our project. He enthusiastically accepted and came to our lab in Shenzhen the very next day. We also had more and deeper discussions regarding social stereotypes of the textile recycling industry. One of the moral questions encountered in our questionnaire is "are the clothes in the donation bin being sold again instead of given to people in need and poverty?" Mr. Wang gave us the most thorough answer. According to him, the textile recycling industry is indeed a business chain that always involves selling and purchasing. However, there is nothing that is immoral. "In fact, there are way too many clothes to be sent to the children in poverty...Nowadays, we all do this business under strict legislation," claimed Mr. Wang. So, we have concluded that the only immoral thing is not to clarify the usage of the bins. That means it would be absolutely wrong and unethical to present the bin for donation purposes while the clothes collected are actually sold to textile recycling factories. Due to the lack of clarification, a large number of people still have negative stereotypes about recycling bins and the whole textile recycling industry. After consideration, we decided to create the second episode of our documentary, eradicating the stereotypes through thorough explanation.

Fig.4 Our visit to Mr. Wang's factory

Fig.5 Mr. Wang's visit to our lab

Episode 2: The Fabric Recycling Chain:

To effectively eliminate such deep-rooted stereotypes, we have planned and produced the second episode of our documentary to unveiled the mysterious process of textile recycling told by Mr. Wang, and discussed the moral issue when it comes to the dilematic nature of clothes recycling bin – beneficent donations versus commercialized recycling chain.

Confronting the Maturity of Chemical Recycling

After consulting Mr. Wang, we have a glimpse at mechanical recycling yet we were also are that we had not yet fully understand another approach in the industry – chemical-based recycling. Knowing Exxon Mobil's side project regarding plastic waste management, we went to talk with Mr. Zhao from Exxon Mobil, one of the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies. Through the talk, we wanted to see if there are any disadvantages with the current industrialized chemical recycling method and how it may differ from our potential biological method, hoping this would provide insights on defining a good solution.

After introducing our project, he acknowledged that our synthetic biology solution of degrading and recycling natural fiber is hopeful and relatively new in the industry, as most chemical or biological methods have not been commercialized. However, from a real-life business point of view, he stressed the importance of the practicability of the biological method. While he recognized the need for natural fiber recycling, he cast doubt on our proposed synthetic biological way of degrading PET, since the current chemical recycling method of PET is very mature and already commercialized.

Before the talk with Mr. Zhao, we had some misconceptions about chemical recycling plants. We initially thought that concentrated chemicals in these plants might be erosive and bad for the environment, causing water pollution. In addition, we perceived maybe these plants require high temperatures and high pressure to function, requiring fossil fuel and other non-renewable energy. However, we knew these were just some ordinary misconceptions after the talk. Mr. Zhao told us that plants in large proper companies are all enclosed plants with high efficiency; the environmental impact is not as grand as people expect. More importantly, he claimed with the increasing advancement in the industry, energy needed in plants should not necessarily be considered wasting fossil fuels. For example, a plant responsible for the fractional distillation of petroleum can produce much energy as byproducts. This energy, in return, can avoid being wasted but used in plastic recycling plants instead. This way, we can get the fractions as desired and energy simultaneously. The talk gave us a valuable opportunity to investigate the reality of the market and future prospects, prompting us to compare the advantages of bio-degrading PET carefully.

Biological Treatment 101 with Dr. Chan

After facing the reality of the PET recycling market, we started to question if Synthetic Biology is the correct route for degrading synthetic fibers in clothes. With frustration and confusion we started to look for mature companies who adopt biological methods. We excitedly realized that Mr. Keh from HKRITA could probably help us as HKRITA is a successful and mature company in the textile recycling industry who has been working with biological methods. When we contacted Mr. Keh again, he gladly suggested he could help us to contact Dr. Alex Chan, the Research Manager from the Technical Department of HKRITA. Soon, Dr. Chan kindly accepted our invitation for an online interview, as regulations regarding COVID-19 extinguished our wish and enthusiasm towards visiting HKRITA's laboratory based in Hong Kong.

According to Dr. Chan 's description, mechanical and chemical approaches are the more basic approaches, but still, mechanical recycling methods usually end up in down-cycling, and chemical recycling methods are not always pollution-free. The biological methods, on the other hand, are the most natural yet have not been developed into a large-scale manufacturing process due to their high cost. Dr. Chan claimed that HKRITA had attempted to produce fungal cellulase in the past to facilitate their biological project. However, the efficiency of degradation was rather low. They have not given up on the biological route as the end product of biological degradation is a monomer, glucose, which can be used to produce a broad range of products through Synthetic Biology. This strongly boosts our incentives to cling to our promising initial idea.

During the interview, Dr. Chan also advised us to consider the pretreatment of clothes. According to Dr. Chan, the presence of pigments will intervene with the reactions later in the process, and would significantly decrease the efficiency. In one of HKRITA's projects, namely the Hydrothermal method, activated carbon is used to bind with the dye particles and is washed away to achieve decolorization. We, thus, were inspired and started to design our pretreatment methods. Later, we got more constructive suggestions from Mr. Yao, a Textile Chemical Engineer.

Fig.6 Communication with Dr. Chan

Embarking on an Enzymatic Route of Recycling PET

HKRITA's project has its main focus on cellulose degradation. For more information on PET recycling, Dr. Chan suggested Jiaren New Materials, from Zhejiang, China, one of the most successful companies if not the best in the PET recycling industry.

It was very surprising to find out that Jiaren New Materials is working on enzymatic recycling of PET as most of the companies, like Exxon Mobil, in the PET degrading industry focus on mechanical or chemical approaches, according to our prior research. Mr. Hu guided us through the advantages and disadvantages of different routes of PET recycling, and aided us to make the final decision.

He told us that mechanical methods are the easiest, but the quality of recycled polyester is rather low, and it is difficult to produce high-quality synthetic fiber through mechanical methods. Most of the recycled polyester from mechanical methods is usually used as a filling, but is hardly possible to be reused in the textile industry. On the other hand, enzymatic methods are more complicated and costly. Nevertheless, it can help to achieve efficient usage of recycled polyester. In enzymatic methods, PET is broken down into two monomers, terephthalic acid, and ethylene glycol. Thus, fresh-new PET can be synthesized again by polymerization of these two monomers, giving the recycled PET a high quality and is capable of being fed back to the textile industry again.

When it comes to chemical recycling, Jiaren New Materials is more proficient in PET recycling in textiles particularly, while Mr. Zhao from Exxon Mobil is more insightful in PET recycling of plastic products, for instance, plastic water bottles. We learned that it is way more difficult to selectively degrade PET in textiles than to degrade plastic products. In this case, enzymatic degradation is advantageous since it degrades PET in cotton-polyester-blend fabrics. Thus, this discussion with Mr. Hu steeled our resolve and proved our project's feasibility. As a result, we decided to take the enzymatic recycling route to cope with the synthetic fibers in unwanted clothes and included PETase in our project design.

Fig.7 Chat history with Mr. Hu

Forming a Closed Loop and a Circular Economy

Loopt Foundation focuses mainly on upcycling, recycling, and downcycling textile waste through mechanical methods and operates as a non-profit organization in Portland, Oregon, USA. In the meeting with Looptworks, we talked with the Executive Director of Loopt ––– Mr. Scott Welch. The meeting provided us with an inspiring overview of the textile and recycling industry and what positive impact our project could bring to the industry. Our topics included how many clothes are entered into the recycling industry, how the textile industry operates in terms of the consumer and supplier side, what challenges the industry faces, how the manufacturing side cooperates with the designers, and so on. Most importantly, Mr. Welch also advised us to establish a closed loop within the fashion industry, namely recycling textile to textile, instead of bringing waste from other industries into the fashion industry to be recycled into textiles to compensate for the impracticality of waste textile recycling.

Mr. Welch made us understand that it is important to consider where the waste we want to recycle comes from; the locations or industries of this source would make a difference. Specifically, various companies are recycling polymers in plastic water bottles into pellets, which can be made into clothes again. This is because PET water bottles are purer and easier to recycle; however, this is not a long-term sustainable and ideal solution, purposely ignoring the mass of waste textile also primarily made of PET. Only if we develop a method to deal with impurities effectively and recycle textiles back to textiles can we create a closed-loop and circular fashion industry. Therefore, we realized that FabRevivo could utilize textile waste, use the recycled material from the cycle, and upcycle it. This way, overall, the material has a higher recycling efficiency, making us one more step closer to a close-looped fashion.

Through the meeting, we learned that in the manufacturing process, 10 to 30 percent of waste occurs during the cut and sewing of apparel. Furthermore, only approximately 20 percent of clothing is recycled, while about 95 percent could be reused or recycled. Moreover, people may only wear 50 percent of the clothing they purchase. These indicate a great potential for greater scale for the clothing recycling industry and encouraging more efficient use of textiles. Another problem with fast fashion may also be related to the fact that, since the supply chain and brands are separated, low cost may be the primary consideration, so firms and factories are rather mobile, making it hard to set up more extensive systems for recycling. Nevertheless, we gained more advice and suggestions on how our project could provide a new biological solution for treating textile waste and becoming competitive and green. Acknowledging the industry's challenges, we are inspired to consider how our project could be a good solution. In the industry, mechanical methods were the primary method, followed by the chemical solution that also deals with the synthetic component in textiles. Our goal is to develop a more efficient and affordable biological solution that could participate in the various recycling methods to maximize the use of resources and make products with relatively high value and valuable. In our project FabRevivo, we aim to develop an alternative way of utilizing cellulose and the synthetic fiber PET via our enzyme and scaffold system. Our discussion with Mr. Welch provided us with many meaningful ideas. For instance, we could try localizing supply chains, establishing centers for processing apparel, creating a cyclical economy, and remanufacturing old clothes into individualized products for people. Moreover, Mr. Welch suggested that we can scale up our project, overcoming the geographic barriers and labor costs. By making the degradation process easily accessible in labs worldwide, we can prevent the high cost of shipping. This omits both the cost generated by machines and the transportation process, hopefully to the extent that cheap labor in developing countries is no longer a worthy choice. Allowing the supply chain to be built everywhere is one of the significant advantages of our project. Furthermore, Mr. Welch strongly suggested it would be a good idea to connect with designers to learn how they evaluate the fabrics they use, the quality of the fabric, and how it affects the manufacturing process. We learned that designers often are less connected to the textile manufacturing and recycling side. Therefore, since our project also involves reusing fabric for new ones, we need to consult individual designers to determine their priorities. Ultimately, we see more of the values of what we are doing. Mr. Welch pointed out that chemical methods may still have potential safety issues; lots of red tapes are required to build facilities. On the other hand, the mechanical degradation method is hard to scale up and operate across the world, requiring intensive labor work. However, if we can offer a cheaper biological method that can be easily built and operated, we have a better chance to scale up and deal with this global issue. Our method is safer, might be more accepted by the local community, and can be implemented faster.

Ideating and Realizing Our Solution

During our solution's ideation and realization stage, we consulted with both wet and dry lab experts to prevent or overcome difficulties encountered in the lab. We ensured that our design was both scientifically feasible and fulfilled the stakeholders' needs.

Textile Pretreatments with Textile Chemist Mr. Yao

According to Dr. Chan, the first problem we would meet is the removal and treatment of dye. As a consequence, we interviewed Mr. Yao, who is a specialist in textile chemical engineering. Mr. Yao is proficient in removal of different types of dyes from textiles. Evaluating a wide range of methods to remove dyes, we have finalized the method we would adopt.

Mr. Yao claimed that we can either use chemical or biological methods. Biological methods involve using specific enzymes that are used corresponding to each type of dye. Chemical methods, on the other hand, come in a variety. The most basic approach is using hydrogen peroxide. It is the least costly and the most environmentally friendly chemical to use, but is not the most effective. If we would like a more thorough removal of dyes, we could consider a chemical called DMF. After consideration and evaluation, we eventually decided to use a higher concentration of hydrogen peroxide, 30% hydrogen peroxide, as the cost is inevitably a significant consideration when it comes to implementing our project into the real world.

Furthermore, Mr. Yao enthusiastically offered us more resources regarding dye removal and implementation of our project, including but not limited to the book Recycling of Waste Polymer Materials and the GRS certificate.

Fig.8 Chat history with Mr. Yao

Finalizing Downstream Products

The next step after pretreatment was our main experiment. After deciding to assemble cellulosome-like enzyme complexes, we started to seek possible downstream products as feasible applications of monosaccharides, mainly glucose that are degraded from cellulose in clothes, or ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid that are degraded from PET. Dr. Zhou is an assistant professor from Wuhan Textile University, Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering. During the research, we occasionally saw Dr. Zhou used not only simple sugar but polymers, terylene – namely PET – as the carbon sources to produce bacterial cellulose. Those carbon sources exactly matched our products, so we contacted Dr. Zhou and successfully conducted an interview with him.

Clearly and detailedly, Dr. Zhou introduced how to culture Acetobacter xylinum to maximum yield of bacterial cellulose and an array of applications of bacterial cellulose: In the food industry, it can be processed into coconut jelly; in the biomedical industry, it can be the ingredient of artificial organs and surgical dressing; in the fashion industry, it can be the man-made leather. Such a wide range of applications of bacterial cellulose facilitated our team to further explore this material. Eventually, our team decided to use the sugar from the degradation of cellulose as the source to produce bacterial cellulose instead of PET due to the low yield.

Thus, the primary product degraded from the natural fiber in clothes can be converted into man-made leather to make fashion items again, giving rise to a closed loop.

Fig.9 Communication with Dr. Zhou

Wet Lab and Hardware Improvements with LINKS_China

Not only did we gain help for our pretreatment, but we also sought help from another strong team in the same lab, LINKS_China, regarding our main experiments. Due to the unsuccessful expression of fungal enzymes by E.coli, our team immediately resorted to yeast. To eliminate even more obstacles to the progress of our experiments, we asked for help from LINKS_China, who had already successfully constructed a shuttle vector in S.cereviae and E.coli. They willingly and gladly offered us the shuttle vector and the corresponding gene sequence with detailed information. With their precious help, we effectively conducted the experiments in S.cereviae and modified the vector, enabling it to be expressed by K.marxianus. Throughout the next few months, this significant shuttle vector from LINKS_China, thereby acting as a catalyst to accelerate the progression of the experiments of our team.

Moreover, we were amazed by LINKS_China's hardware prototype as soon as we met it. We realized that it is essential to design hardware to enable our project to become more realistic and reliable in future implementation. Meanwhile, LINKS_China had noticed our predicament, and one of their warmhearted advisors, Shuhan Ming timetabled a few discussions with us. With her thoughtful guidance and constructive suggestions, we finally completed our design in CAD software and used a 3D printer to print it out as a demonstration of our prototype.

Fig.10 LINKS_China's advisor, Ming, was helping us to build up hardware models

Episode 3: Hardware Design:

We did not stop at obtaining positive experiment results. In the third episode of our documentary, we have thoroughly explained the well-considered hardware designed by ourselves with the help of LINKS_China

Implementation and Evaluation

Based on the insightps of both wet and dry lab experts, and based on the advice from different stakeholders, our team conceived and designed the implementation of our solution along with a thorough self-reflection. This is a necessary step to assign meaning to our solution, to connect technology with society.

Proposed End Users

Our primary customers will be firms and organizations that specialize in collecting and treating textile waste, which we found to be abundant in number through our human practice. Nevertheless, a large number of firms that collect, sort, and process textile wastes mainly adopt physical methods followed by incineration for livelihood. Our project utilizes a biological approach involving multiple advantageous aspects that out-compete traditional methods, comprising efficiency, end products with market value, and low pollution; we thus aim to offer a more preferable substitute for the traditional methods adopted by the specific markets.

Other customers also include manufacturers and retailers of clothes. According to statistics, manufacturers and retailers generate around 13 million tons of textile waste yearly due to the overproduction of clothes (Portela), as 30% of the clothes produced are never sold every season (Elven). Through our research, we noticed that the pursuit of social responsibility and business reputation is gradually becoming a significant concern among firms and manufacturers, particularly those who dominate the market and possess a relatively large market share. It's becoming increasingly common for large, oligopolistic firms to establish programs regarding the recycling of materials and products produced by themselves; therefore, our project provides a novel, cost-effective, and profit-generating new solution to the demand of clothing manufacturers and retailers.

We furthermore hope to offer our product to non-profit organizations and local government authorities seeking a cost-effective, environment-friendly solution to the detrimental impact brought by inefficient and pollution-causing processing methods.

Evaluation by Scarlett Yang

Besides hypothetically determining our end users, we contacted one of our proposed end users for comment and evaluation of our project before the final self-evaluation. As Mr. Welch (see above in part 2) mentioned, designers must be aware of the material chosen and how products should be designed to ease recycling. Therefore, sustainability has to be a top priority for designers in the future.

We interviewed an alumna from SCIE, Scarlett Yang, who is now a London-based designer focused on material tactility with previous experiences working in bio labs. We invited her to share her point of view regarding the fast fashion market and the current issues faced by bio-materials in the market, as well as to evaluate the significance of our project and our end products – bacterial cellulose and PET in the future market.

Ms. Yang mentioned that most designers who work for large fashion companies do not have control over what kinds of textiles to use, and profit-motivated corporations mainly aim for low-cost and time-saving materials. However, independent designers can often decide what textiles they want to use in garments and focus more on the visual aesthetic, coloring, elasticity, rigidity, and flexibility of the textiles, meaning that they have high standards for choosing the desired textiles.

As a designer with past experiences using biomaterials in her clothes design, Ms. Yang expressed her opinions on the benefits and limitations of biomaterial application in garment manufacturing. She suggested that the properties of conventional materials are fixed and usually have complex production procedures; as for biomaterials, their properties can be flexible. Moreover, many leading fashion companies were investing in the development of bio-materials, making it an extremely prospective industry. However, Ms. Yang also stated that the consumers would not change their consuming behavior so quickly only because the products are made with biomaterials, and the general criticisms from the consumers include concerns about the high price and safety problems of these clothes.

Despite these difficulties and obstacles faced by the biomaterial market, Ms. Yang had great confidence about its future prospect when she stated: “It may take a very long time, but I believe we would eventually reach that point when biomaterials become the main trend.” It is necessary for the environment to reduce the amount of pollution caused by non-recyclable clothes, and our project has the potential to revolutionize the fashion industry.

Fig.11 Showing Scarlett leather-like bacterial cellulose

Advantages and Challenges

Sustainability: Our product will provide a more sustainable alternative to this current treatment method as it is more environmentally friendly than many of the existing methods, including incineration, landfill, mechanical treatment, and chemical treatment.

Upcycling: Our cellulosome eventually breaks down the fabric into glucose which we turn into bacterial cellulose--maximizing the commercial value and utility of the textile.

Flexibility: In addition, our scaffold structure provides a great degree of flexibility to the type of enzyme we add to the backbone. This means our cellulosome has the potential to degrade a wide range of materials, potentially eliminating a considerable sum of human sorting costs and other costs that may be involved in adjusting to breaking down different materials. Furthermore, the benefits of cellulosome--a multi-enzyme synergy complex are not only limited to cellulose degradation; by expressing and incorporating different kinds of enzymes, cellulosome can be effectively brought to use in fields including enzyme-catalyzed reactions and synthesis in biotechnology, polyester and plastic fiber degradation--it possesses countless possibilities.

Public Attention

Across the globe, people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of environmental protection. Consumers, especially young people, resonate more with firms whose decisions and actions correspond with local and global environmental initiatives. As they are the eventual consumers of commercial products, firms that are taking climate action by employing our products are able to pursue an extent of social responsibility, and the consequent increase in reputation will gain traction among consumers.

Problems and challenges we are facing

The potential customers of our product may hold a doubtful attitude towards genetically modified products, questioning their safety. Moreover, we face competition from other existing methods of textile recycling methods. The vast majority of mature industries treat textile waste mainly through physical and chemical methods. When our end users face a decision, they may prefer other existing options over ours due to the maturity and reliability of the traditional methods.

Episode 4: FabRevivo in the Real World:

In the fourth episode of our documentary, we explained the determination of the wide range of users of FabRevivo and proposed a thorough implementation for our project, including research and development, small-scale trial production and outreach, and mass production and brand establishment

References

• Beall, Abigail. “Why Clothes Are so Hard to Recycle.” BBC, BBC, 13 July 2020, bbc.com.
• Elven, Marjorie van. “Infographic: The Extent of Overproduction in the Fashion Industry.” Fashionunited.uk, 12 Dec. 2018, fashionunited.uk.
• Portela, Valentina. “The Fashion Industry Waste Is Drastically Contributing to Climate Change.” CALPIRG, 9 Mar. 2021, prig.org.