Our Winners
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 years.
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PhycoLabs
It can be green, red, or even purple. It’s slimy and sequesters massive amounts of carbon. PhycoLabs transforms seaweed into regenerative fabrics and sources the miracle organism from farming communities along Brazil’s vast coastline. The output? A traceable and regenerative material that improves the health…
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PLSTC
Instead of discarding worn-out synthetics, you can feed them to bacteria that turns them into food. PLSTC has developed bio-engineered bacteria that digests plastic waste and converts it into proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
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Ponda
Healing damaged lands and delivering a planet positive alternative to goose down in the process. Ponda uses regenerative agriculture to rewet and regrow native plants to peatlands, transforming the harvest into warm, light-weight and water-repellent BioPuff®.
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Re:lastane
Polyester and elastane blends are notoriously difficult to recycle. Or, they were. Re:lastane uses a mild chemical process to separate the materials and transform end-of-life garments into reusable raw materials.
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Refiberd
The future of fashion depends hugely on recyclability. But the very first step in the process is proving a massive hurdle. Refiberd turns this obstacle into an opportunity. By merging AI and state-of-art robotics, the innovation detects a garment’s composition and sorts it into its…
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Resortecs
Recycling is one of the biggest obstacles in the fashion industry. And removing buttons and zippers call for manual assistance, making the process costly and time consuming. Resortecs solves the problem by supplying a thread that dissolves at a high temperature.
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Rethread Africa
Bio-based synthetics can be extracted from a variety of raw materials. By turning waste from example sugar and corn production into biobased synthetics, this innovative material uses far fewer resources while upholding the same qualities as petrol-based alternatives. The best part? These textiles will naturally…
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Reverse Resources
Reverse Resources maps, traces and transfers textile leftovers through a network of textile-to-textile partners. This digital platform connects brands, suppliers, recyclers and traders in a push to make textile waste history.
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RISE IVF
Recycling textiles is tricky. Especially if it’s a mix of materials, like polyester and cotton blends. RISE IVF makes garment recycling a breeze. Using an earth-friendly chemical, they separate and regenerate cotton and polyester into new, fully usable, textile fibres.
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Rubi
This future-proof fabric is carbon-negative and consumes virtually no water, no chemicals, no land, and produces no waste. Rubi is planet positive viscose made of carbon emissions captured from the air.
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SeaChange Technologies
This water treatment technology uses a powerful jet engine to purify the most challenging industrial wastewater. Turning sludge and chemical discharge into a dry powder, and extracting clean water to be released or reused.
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Sunthetics
Nylon is a popular synthetic, not only for hosiery, but also for blouses, dresses, raincoats, swimwear and more. But making it is far from sustainable. Until now. Sunthetics harvests the sun’s energy to create an alternative to nylon made from water, plant waste and solar…