Denim hasn’t lost its on-trend status, even as the decades go by. Styles have come and gone, but denim has stayed, thanks to its strength and durability.
Many people may not be aware, but denim puts a strain on the environment when it’s produced. Since it’s primarily made of cotton, it requires a lot of water when producing the fabric. So, it siphons out a lot of resources, creating a tremendous negative environmental impact.
Luckily, more brands have become aware of this and have started looking for alternatives to pure cotton denim. One ingenious way is creating regenerative cotton to make denim.
The Denim Market
In 2020, the denim market was worth $56.2 billion, projected to reach $88.1 billion by 2030. Unfortunately, 5% of landfills are made up of textile wastes, including thrown-away denim. Globally, 2.16 million metric tons of denim are wasted, most ending up in landfills. With the market growing, this figure will only go up unless consumers and brands do something about it.
Apart from the waste produced and the huge water resources requirement to make denim, it’s often mixed with synthetic fibers, which also contributes to toxic waste in the environment. While producing sturdy garments is convenient for consumers, the negative impact hurts us in the long run.
Introducing Regenerative Denim
The public’s awareness of sustainable fashion has been on an upward trend. With this, brands have also picked this up and are taking steps towards finding sustainable alternatives.
While thrifting and avoiding fast fashion is what most consumers do to contribute, brands are doing so through innovation. One such innovation is called regenerative denim.
Recently, the denim brand Candiani has found the solution to traditional denim – a product called Coreva™. It’s essentially regenerative denim or denim created from blue seed cotton. Compared to the usual cotton plant harvested for textiles, blue seed cotton is more resistant and requires less water and nutrients from the soil. It also promotes regenerative agriculture, which improves the ecosystem’s overall health.
Besides blue seed cotton, Coreva™ also uses stretch yarn derived from the rubber tree. This natural yarn is the brand’s alternative to synthetic fibers used in making denim. With this, Candiani has created a sturdy, durable, yet fully biodegradable denim alternative that can be used to make denim.
What Is the Environmental Impact?
The denim Cadiani has recently made is 100% natural and biodegradable, making its life cycle fully circular. Once it becomes compost, the denim’s nutrients return to the soil, providing much-needed nutrients to future crops. On top of this, since blue seed cotton is more resilient than the usual cotton variant, producing this in place of the latter already helps reduce its impact on the ecosystem.
Candiani has mentioned that it would share this technology with many clothing brands worldwide. On top of this, other denim manufacturers, such as Cone Denim and Orta, have taken steps to create their own version of regenerative denim.
For now, one may think that the brands are too few to make a significant positive impact. However, this technology is new and has the potential to make it big in the years to come.
A Solid Step to Sustainable Denimwear
The amount of textile waste the world produces each year is alarming, even more so with the public’s love for fast fashion. Luckily, more and more people and brands have become aware of the long-term adverse effects this poses.
There’s a promising future for sustainable fashion. Thanks to innovation and public awareness, it’s an aspect of life that can truly take off. Regenerative denim is one small but solid step to this, and it’s a fashion aspect we should look out for.
-Azalea
Photo by NEOSiAM (Pexels.com)
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