Wear your waste!
What if we could wear our food waste? Have you thought about how much we waste weekly on various fruit peels and vegetables? What if all this waste could become sustainable raw materials, in a contribution for a circular and sustainable fashion design?
Our scientific research group
With that in mind, the Slow Fashion Innovation Program team has worked in the last year to create a scientific research group focused on discovering and analyze the reuse of food waste in the sustainable fashion and interior design industry.
In partnership with institutions of education and research, industry and commerce, artists, craftsmen, designers, engineers, biochemists, sociologists and anthropologists, and other professionals are investigating and publicizing the uses that can be made of food peels, such as banana, pineapple, potato, damask, and others.
Vegan Leather Applications
The result of this research has surprised us. We found several European suppliers of vegan leather and paper made from the reuse of food scraps.
Are you looking for suppliers of recycled leather? Check our previous article here!
Vegan leather has been applied by our students in the design of jackets, shoes, bags and various accessories.
Here you check the new collection from our students, Astrid Harris. She is designing her vegan collection with diversified sustainable materials, such as cork, fruit leather, hemp. Her designs are registred and personalized and she also is developing new materials herself. Soon you will be able to check the entire collection. For now, you can check her versatile vegan bag made from grass derived fabric. To follow her work, please visit her Instagram page (still very new and in need of followers) :)
Applications of food waste paper
The paper has been used by our students to print business cards, posters, and eco-packaging.
In the pictures below you can see pictures of the Apple and Banana paper made by the designer Monica Gonçalves, one of the teachers of The Slow Fashion Innovation Program.
Monica Gonçalves is a specialist in creating new sustainable materials in the slow fashion industry. She is also a design teacher and the holder of the international patent of cork yarn.
Rosa Nascimento is another teacher of The Slow Fashion Innovation Program, she holds a master's degree in biochemistry by FCT - Nova University. Rosa grew up surrounded by bananas on the farm of her parents in Portugal and made this fruit the object of study of her master's thesis where she has investigatigated the uses of banana in medical healing. She founded a startup called BananaBox where she and her team developed a sustainable packaging solution built from banana waste.
If you would like to learn more about the uses of banana waste in different industries you can check here an interview with Rosa Nascimento.
The students and alumni community of our sustainable fashion business incubator program are also developing their own sustainable materials and soon it will be available for purchase by other brands.
Are you looking for organic cotton suppliers in Europe? Check our previous article here!
If you are interested in applying new vegan and sustainable fabrics in your slow fashion collection but are insure about the components and chemicals involved in their production you can book 50 minutes consulting with our specialists. We will explain to you the different and specific processes used to make these materials.
If you would like to receive in your home samples of these new sustainable fabrics made from food waste with the contact of the suppliers you can order one of our Sample Boxes here!
If you are starting a new collection and need to source sustainable fabrics plus fair trade manufacturing, check The Slow Fashion Innovation Program, our business and production incubator program. As a courtesy, we are offering a Sample Box for free for all the students who register in December. Join our community today!