Rethread

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  About Rethread

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  Textile 3.0

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Inspiration

The fashion industry is destroying our environment in more ways than one. From emitting more GHG emissions than all of transportation combined to being responsible for 20% of industrial water pollution through using heavy chemicals and dyes. At a time when we have longer droughts and shorter rainy seasons, the industry consumes 215 trillion litres of water and this is all due to plastic-based synthetic fibres like polyester and nylon. 60% of the 150 billion garments produced annually are made of synthetic fibres. These fabrics do not decompose and instead break down into microplastics that find their way into killing our marine life and destroying biodiversity. 35% of all microplastics on our floor come from the fashion industry and fast fashion is only adding fuel to the fire. If we want to meet the SDGs in the next 7 years, we must act now because fashion is dressing us for disaster.

What it does

At Rethread, we have the ambitious goal of re-imaging a greener & more sustainable fashion industry. In our bid to replace polyester and other fossil fuel-based synthetic fibres, we upcycle agricultural waste into a new biodegradable textile fibre. Our fabric uses 99% less water, reduces emissions by 52%, and produces 0% microplastics.

How we built it

Over the last couple of months, we have been focused on research and proving the science behind our innovation. We are now ready to commercialize and over the next 36 months, we are investing resources into manufacturing the textile fabrics as we develop and license the technology to do the textile manufacturing to other organizations. We are focusing on maize husk as our primary material for PoC before we use other materials like pineapple leaves, sugarcane bagasse, and banana stem residue.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge has been accessing the equipment and the resources to develop the equipment needed to turn the fibers into yarn and subsequently textiles. We are still working in laboratory conditions and running tests as we remodel spinning machines meant for cotton.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got featured as one of the ten most promising African youth innovations in 2022 during the Youth Connekt Summit in Kigali in October. More importantly, we have stirred conversations around sustainable fashion and circularity in a continent where we rarely see material innovations in & for the fashion industry.

What we learned

We have taken on a huge challenge and we constantly have to learn. When we started, we only had one researcher but we have had to learn to scout for and work with more scientists. Science was responsible for destroying the planet and it is the science that will fix it.

What's next for Rethread

More innovations and collaborations with fashion brands that intend to be more sustainable. More importantly, we are married to our mission of replacing polyester with more sustainable cost-effective alternatives.

Built With

• biomolecular
• chemistry
• research
• technology