You may think of cotton as the dominant source of clothing and apparel. For a long time, I certainly did. However, synthetic fibers actually make up 63% of all the fibers used for the clothing industry worldwide. Why is this important? Well nearly all of these synthetic fibers are derived from petroleum.
We often think of the energy industry as the only area of focus for scaling back our use of fossil fuels in our fight against global warming and climate change. However the clothing industry accounts for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and the primary culprit here are petroleum derived synthetic fibers.
So how do innovate ourselves out of this? In this episode we sit down with Alissa Baier-Lentz, co-founder of Kintra Fibers, a company utilizing natural feedstock to replace the monomers derived from petroleum to make synthetics far more sustainable and cleaner without sacrificing quality or durability.
You can learn more about Kintra's incredible work here
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IN THIS EPISODE:
2:00 - The role of synthetic textiles in fashion/apparel & climate
5:30 - Meet Alissa
13:30 - The low down of synthetic fibers and where they come from
24:00 - Shifting from petroleum to feedstocks
28:30 - Why this shift in synthetics has not happened sooner
34:40 - The biggest challenge ahead for Kintra
36:30 - Responsibility of consumer demand vs. corporate proactive change
44:40 - The full impact of moving from petroleum monomers to feedstock monomers
55:10 - Rapid Fire with Alissa