Meet our heroes – the winners of the Global Change Award – and find out how their innovations are reinventing the fashion and textile industry.
Innovation has the power to do it, and previous GCA winners prove it. Already, several past winners are used by, or in collaborations with, global brands and businesses to transform the entire textile industry.
Below you get an overview of our GCA winners through the year.
Adetex
Recycling
The solution to full-scale textile recycling may, literally, be hanging by a thread. A thin RFID thread, that is. Adetexs has developed a washable and flexible e-thread packed with valuable information and designed to bridge the communication gap between manufacturers and recyclers to enable automatic garment recycling.
Algae Fabrics
What if the answer to some of fashion’s most pressing issues lies just below the surface of the ocean? Algae Fabrics extracts cellulose from seaweed and immerses it in a liquid, creating a regenerative textile that needs no land — and obviously no watering.
Algaeing
Material
Most people know algae as something that clings to their legs when swimming in a murky lake. Turns out it has much more to offer. Algaeing transforms seaweed into bio-fibre and eco-friendly dye. And it gets better — the product releases antioxidants and vitamins that benefit the skin.
Algreen
Material
The foam in our shoes, the coating on our coats, the invisible seams on our gym clothes. They all include polyurethane, a resilient petrochemical causing microplastics pollution. Algreen is a biobased alternative that uses nature to heal nature — creating adhesives, foams and coatings made with regenerative technology reducing plastic pollution.
ALT TEX
Material
Only two thirds of the food produced in the world ends up in our bellies. The rest is lost or wasted. Using three steps, ALT TEX transforms food waste and makes it wearable. The novel solution ferments waste into polymers, melts polymers into yarn, and spins yarn into an industrially biodegradable polyester.
Ambercycle
Recycling
What’s gone, isn’t gone forever. Ambercycle brings end-of-life textiles back to life, unlocking new life cycles for materials through a molecular regeneration process. The innovation separates components in textiles and creates pure raw materials for brands and manufacturers.
BIORESTORE
Customer Use
A laundry solution that removes pilling and restores shape and colour to worn-out garments. The solution’s perfect mix of enzymes and minerals react with water and fibres, launching a bio-chemical process that renews clothes in one wash.
Circular Systems
Material
Banana trees, pineapple leaves, rice straws, sugar cane stalks and seed oil from hemp and flax. These food byproducts are often seen as waste and left to rot. Circular Systems’ innovation transforms leftovers into bio-textiles in a cost competitive and scalable way.
circular.fashion
Design
With state-of-the-art digital tools, circular.fashion is moving the textile industry towards circularity. It enables manufacturers to champion circular textiles. Makes it easy for designers to choose sustainable techniques. And gives consumers a product passport showing an item’s planetary impact.
Deakin University
Production
Jeans are fashion’s most iconic style. But giving the wardrobe staple their signature blue pigment is one of the industry’s most water-consuming processes. Deakin University has a developed a solution that makes it possible to use used denim to dye new denim.
dimpora
Material
To make outdoor wear withstand harsh weather conditions, environmentally harmful substances are often added. Dimpora has developed a solution. Their biodegradable, non-toxic, mineral-based membrane shields humans against the elements — and benefits the planet’s shared resources.
DyeRecycle
Recycling
There are the common, everyday recyclables: empty soda cans, newspapers, end-of-life textiles. Then, there are the seemingly impossible ones, like colour. DyeRecycle uses green chemistry to give discarded fabric a second chance and salvage their dyes — enabling the colour from an old garment to be extracted, revived, and used to dye new fabrics.
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