BUCHA BIO’S MATERIAL SOLUTION TO SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY
By Emily Cai
7 March, 2022
The recent introduction of a New York bill calling for transparency and accountability joins the ranks of urgent voices pushing for more progress in sustainability in the fashion industry. Fast fashion’s environmental impact ranges from microplastic pollution in the ocean to millions of tons of textile waste ending up in landfills annually. Bucha Bio, a material solutions startup, is creating biodegradable materials from natural and renewable bacterial nanocellulose as part of the solution.
The recent introduction of a New York bill calling for transparency and accountability joins the ranks of urgent voices pushing for more progress in sustainability in the fashion industry. Fast fashion’s environmental impact ranges from microplastic pollution in the ocean to millions of tons of textile waste ending up in landfills annually. Bucha Bio, a material solutions startup, is creating biodegradable materials from natural and renewable bacterial nanocellulose as part of the solution.
Although current slow fashion philosophies tout investing in timeless pieces and capsule wardrobes, Zimri T. Hinshaw, Bucha Bio CEO, believes that consumers should not be faulted for wanting to feel their best by trying new trends or seasonal styles. “There is this big narrative that fast fashion is the consumer’s fault [and] that consumers are the reason that fast fashion is creating all this horrible waste,” Hinshaw explains. “[Consumers] have so many problems to deal with that they aren’t worrying about sustainability or the environment. They have lives, they have children, they have jobs.” And while he believes that the fashion industry has done well to create seasonal items at affordable price points, it has failed to do so using materials that can be broken down after their intended lifespan.
The Bucha Bio Process
Hinshaw first entered the world of bacterial nanocellulose when he was working on a project designing a leather jacket, but couldn’t source a good alternative to leather. While there have been previous experiments in creating kombucha leather using SCOBY — a biofilm formed as a byproduct of the bacterial nanocellulose fermentation used in brewing kombucha — he quickly realized that this completely natural and renewable process had more potential beyond creating leather alternatives.
To illustrate this process, Alex Kalin, Bucha Bio’s Senior Materials Scientist, describes, “There’s a bacteria and it’s in a water solution, and there’s sugar dissolved in that water. And the bacteria sees a sugar molecule and it will take the molecule and link it to another molecule.” As individual sugar molecules link together and create cellulose polymers, they add up to form a solid sheet of material. This process is based only on sugar which is naturally occurring.
The Sustainability Philosophy
Solutions for fast fashion’s environmental impact currently run the gamut from using polyester sourced from recycled water bottles to moving to rental business models. However, most solutions still rely on the consumer’s due diligence to research and judge brands’ sustainability practices, placing the responsibility on the consumer to buy less frequently and more conscientiously. Bucha Bio is approaching the problem differently. Rather than placing the burden of sustainable shopping in the consumer’s hands, they believe that raw material suppliers need to take on the responsibility of supplying 100% bio-based and biodegradable materials for pieces that consumers can buy, guilt-free.
Central to Bucha Bio’s sustainability philosophy is the idea of creating materials that fit into the context they’re meant to serve. Timeless pieces made to last generations should be made of materials that stand the test of time. Seasonal pieces made to be replaced with new trends should be made to naturally cycle back into the environment much sooner. That is why Bucha Bio looks to offer materials at different price points for these different uses, accessible to everyone.
The Possibilities are Infinite
The very first of the materials born from this process were oily and brittle. Hinshaw still keeps a sample of this first version as a relic of how far they’ve come. Since then, the company has evolved from thinking of bacterial nanocellulose as a substrate to thinking of it as an ingredient to be combined with other biopolymers and reagents that can create highly-tunable biomaterials. By changing the bio-based reagents that are added, material properties ranging from fire resistance to glow-in-the-dark can be customized and achieved, while maintaining an entirely bio-based material. In contrast with its very first prototypes, Bucha Bio’s pinnacle Shorai™ — a luxury biotextile that can be used as a leather alternative — has now tested for tensile strength comparable to that of animal leather, while still maintaining a rich and luxurious handfeel.
Creating Shorai™ is Bucha Bio’s first step in creating a new category of materials. By reframing the way it thinks of using bacterial nanocellulose, Bucha Bio is pioneering an entirely new and natural process of creating polymers. And polymers, especially combined with other bio-based ingredients, can create renewable alternatives to a variety of the plastic composites that we see and use in products all around us today. Any object that uses petrochemical-based materials — furniture, clothing, building materials — has the potential to be replaced by this new natural alternative.
In Kalin’s words, “The possibilities become endless and approaching infinite.”
The Future of Fashion Sustainability
When Hinshaw describes the company’s vision for the future, he describes a scene from New York Fashion Week where everything — from the clothing, to the runway, the audience seating, and the vehicles guests arrive in — is created entirely from sustainable biomaterials. This vision seems far off from the world we live in now, but the first step has already been taken.
Emily Cai is a contributing fashion sustainability writer at Bucha Bio and a materials designer at Reebok
