ALT TEX: Fabric made from food waste 🍎👕

Hey All! We’re Myra and Avneet, co-founders of ALT TEX. We’ve created the world’s first polyester-alternative fabric, made from food waste.

🌍 The problem: polyester is leading fashion’s GHG emissions, but has no circular alternative.

The fashion industry’s heavy reliance on petroleum-derived polyester textiles is a major contributor to the 10% of global GHG emissions the industry generates annually. The plastic-based material, found in 60% of the clothes we wear, creates over 50 million tons of global annual landfill waste, generates 35% of all ocean micro-plastics, and consumes 70 million barrels of oil each year.

Despite 1/3 of the fashion industry committing to 0 carbon emissions by 2050, polyester, the most widely used fabric, has no fully circular, carbon-neutral alternative.

At the same time, food waste is on the rise with 1 billion tons generated annually across the world. So, we’re using one problem 🍎 to fix the other 👕. Here’s how ⬇️

👕 The Solution: Fabric created from the world’s largest waste source - food waste.

ALT TEX reduces the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels through its biodegradable and carbon-neutral textiles engineered from food waste. The patent-pending fermentation technology plugs into the existing polyester supply chain to provide fashion brands with a cradle-to-cradle polyester alternative without sacrificing performance.

The product solves key problems for fashion brands, consumers, and the environment:

1. Fashion brands: ALT TEX sells fabric to fashion brands, allowing them to differentiate via sustainable options (sustainable fashion growing 11% CAGR) and hit sustainability targets, without sacrificing performance or changing their current supply chain.
2. Consumer: The ALT TEX fabric is projected to be half the price vs. other specialized sustainable alternatives (due to low-cost input and scalability), meaning greater accessibility.
3. Environment: A single shirt produced with ALT TEX fabric can divert 1 kg of food waste from landfills, 9 kg of carbon emissions from the air, and 4 g of micro-plastics from our waterways.

The Story & Future:

Myra and Avneet have worked on every school project together since the 9th grade. With Myra’s background in corporate sales and family history in the textile sector, alongside Avneet’s background in environmental science and biochemistry, the two came together in 2020 to build ALT TEX. Today, ALT TEX has created its fabric prototype, raised $2,300,000 USD in funding, secured $1,000,000 in pilot LOIs and has grown the team to 10.

How you can help:

As we scale out of the lab and into the market over the next year, we’re looking for:

1. fashion brands interested in sourcing a sustainable polyester alternative
2. food manufacturers looking for a sustainable way to re-purpose their waste

If you’re curious or have help/resources for us, please feel free to reach out!

📩 myra@thealttex.com

🌐 thealttex.com | linkedin.com/company/alt-tex/

👩‍💻 @thealttex