Fast fashion refers to the phenomenon of a trendy piece of clothing that gets mass produced at a low cost, and has a short life-cycle. Stores such as Shein, Zara, and Forever 21 have built an entire business model based on replicating the trends of high fashion but at a dirt-cheap price and even worse quality [1]. The fast fashion industry has done irreparable damage to the environment, and leads to 10 percent of global CO2 emissions every year along with 92 million tons of waste [2] [3]. The environmental impacts of fast fashion can be felt everywhere, from clothes that wind up in rivers and landfills, to microfibers filling water supplies.
If you're an environmentally conscious consumer, you might reduce your participation in fast fashion by purchasing less clothes, shopping at second-hand stores, and purchasing clothes made from sustainable materials [4]. New trends in smart clothing present another way for consumers to combat fast fashion practices, with the integration of smart materials into everyday clothing. This integration can provide clothes with benefits such as self healing properties, increased durability, and active comfort-changing qualities that give consumers a better alternative to fast fashion practices.
Self healing clothes
If you've seen many superhero movies, you're likely familiar with the idea of self-healing wearable technology such as Iron Man’s suit in Avengers: Infinity War. Although the idea of healable clothing seems a bit far-fetched, some recent research suggests that permanently damaged clothing may be a thing of the past [5]. Inspired by the fascinating ability of living organisms to heal themselves, scientists have been hard at work synthesizing different methods to achieve self healing properties.
The first appearance of a self healing article of clothing on the mainstream market was a windbreaker from American brand Imperial Motion, which used the brand's signature Nano-Cure Technology (NCT). NCT allowed this jacket to patch holes and fix damage in seconds, by simply rubbing the fabric with your fingers, and letting the heat/friction transform the material back into its original shape. Although this technology didn't have the market appeal to put the company in the Fortune 500, NCT was the first product of its kind to hit the market, and remains as one of the only self healing materials to be commercially produced today.
Figure 1: Imperial Motion’s NCT windbreaker adapted from MensHealth.com
Another approach, adopted by scientists at Newcastle University, uses fungi and mycelium based materials to create a fabric-like material that shows extraordinary self healing properties [6]. Although it may seem like a strange concept to wear a fungus as a piece of clothing, after a series of post-processing treatments have been applied, the mycelium boasts a “Textile, leather, or foam based properties.” The self healing properties of the mycelium are quite different from the healing properties of NCT and other synthetic materials, because the mycelium is a living organism. The mycelium can take up to 5 days to completely heal a damaged section, but retains 100% of its self healing properties, whereas some synthetic materials will not retain full self healing properties after one or two cycles of healing.
Despite the self healing properties, mushroom clothes to many people sounds like an infection or illness waiting to happen. Although research on the hygiene side of fungi clothing is sparse, research out of the Anhui Province in China focuses on developing self cleaning antibacterial clothing, to combat the spread of illness [7]. This fabric, when exposed to sunlight, has a remarkable ability to achieve 99.99% disinfection of E Coli and S aureus in just 5 minutes. This property gives the fabric incredible use in civilian disease protection, and can control the outbreak of disease simply through the power of sunlight.
Carbon Nanotube Clothing
Trades workers like plumbers and construction workers tend to develop an affinity for good workwear from their job conditions. This phenomenon allowed for the growth of clothing brands that preach durability, such as Carhartt, Wrangler, and Dickies. An interesting trend in recent times is the adoption of these brands (Carhartt in particular) into the fashion industry [8]. A mix of factors lead to this adoption, mainly due to 90’s nostalgia, and the “Work In Progress” line of clothing from Carhartt. Aside from pure aesthetics however, there is no debating the durability of any Carhartt piece, which comes in part from the heavy gauge fabric that they use in nearly all of their clothes. But what if every article in your closet had the same, or even increased durability and reliability of Carhartt pieces [7], [9], and could detect changes in your movement and body temperature [10]? The integration of carbon nanotubes in everyday clothes gives incredible physical properties like extreme durability, electrical conductivity, and sensing capabilities.
Figure 2: Carbon Nanotube microstructure adapted from Canatu.com
Carbon nanotubes can be woven in between the fibers of many traditional clothing fabrics to create a new type of reinforced fabric that has increased strength and puncture resistance [9] [11]. These qualities are scalable, and present a slight trade off between material comfort and durability. With high concentrations of carbon nanotubes, the material becomes plastic-y, hard and uncomfortable, not ideal for a sunday brunch or work meeting. Staying in the low concentration range of carbon nanotubes, traditional clothes have been modified to show nearly tripled puncture resistance without a noticeable change in comfort [11].
Aside from the obvious benefits of keeping your clothes looking clean and new and without holes, applications in civilian safety have also been explored to protect the wearer from stabbings. Reminiscent of chainmail armor worn by 16th century knights, the flexibility of this civilian armor is what separates it from traditional body armor like Kevlar and Plate carriers that are heavy and hard to maneuver [11].
Carbon nanotubes can also be used in clothing for conducting electricity, which has great potential in the biomedical industry, to send targeted pulses of electricity to a patient in specific areas [10]. Consider for example, a diabetic patient that has a particular sensitivity to traditional glucose monitoring systems. Researchers at Louisiana State University have made a system that uses a non-invasive enzyme that reacts with glucose and produces an electric signal. The carbon nanotube infused shirt can then pick up the signal from anywhere on the torso and tell the patient important information about their glucose level [12]. Applications of conductive clothing go far beyond diabetic treatment, and can be useful for monitoring a person's breathing and limb movements [13]. The conductive material changes properties when expanded and contracted, which gives doctors valuable and exact information about a person's breathing cycle and limb mobility. Overall, carbon nanotubes have the unique ability to turn everyday clothes into real life super-suits with qualities that go much beyond that of your average t-shirt.
Figure 3: Carbon nanotube-infused shirt adapted from SciTechDaily.com
Conclusions
Overall, smart materials have seen a great deal of use in the clothing industry in recent years, and have been integrated into clothing to create more sustainable and technologically advanced alternatives to fast fashion. Self healing clothes have been achieved through a variety of methods like synthesizing new healing compounds, and even using living fungi with healing properties. Carbon nanotubes can be woven in between fibers of traditional clothing fabrics to create a composite fabric with extreme durability and conductive properties.
The fast fashion industry is a complete failure by the human race to respect the earth’s natural resources, and causes an immense amount of damage to the environment every year. The manufacturing and waste management of fast fashion clothing causes more damage to the environment than you may realize. It's important to think about the clothes you purchase and ask yourself questions like “how long is this piece going to last me?” or “do i really need this?”. These smart materials can give consumers an alternative to fast fashion that satisfies the environmentally friendly answers to these questions. So, the next time you're out shopping for cheap and trendy clothes, consider the reaches of current technology and reconsider your participation in fast fashion practices.
References
[1] E. Mohn, “Fast Fashion.,” Salem Press Encycl., 20230930, Accessed: Jul. 01, 2024. [Online].
Available: https://openurl.ebsco.com/contentitem/ers:109057015?sid=ebsco:plink:crawler&id=eb
sco:ers:109057015&crl=c
[2] A. Dannehl, A. Buhr, A. Sanchez Leyton, L. Hellweg, M. Beer, and L. Sabantina,
“Self-healing materials for potential use in textile and clothing applications,” Commun.
Dev. Assem. Text. Prod., vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 27–41, Feb. 2023, doi: 10.25367/cdatp.2023.4.p27-41.
[3] R. Maiti, “Fast Fashion: Its Detrimental Effect on the Environment,” Earth.Org.
Accessed: Jul. 01, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://earth.org/fast-fashions
-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/
[4] “How can we reduce our Fashion Environmental Impact,” SustainYourStyle.
Accessed: Jul. 01, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/reducing-our-impact
[5] D. Gaddes et al., “Self-Healing Textile: Enzyme Encapsulated Layer-by-Layer Structural Proteins,”
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, vol. 8, no. 31, pp. 20371–20378, Aug. 2016, doi: 10.1021/acsami.6b05232.
[6] E. Elsacker, M. Zhang, and M. Dade-Robertson, “Fungal Engineered Living Materials: The
Viability of Pure Mycelium Materials with Self-Healing Functionalities,” Adv. Funct. Mater.,
vol. 33, no. 29, p. 2301875, 2023, doi: 10.1002/adfm.202301875.
[7] S. Pi et al., “Durable Rapid Self-Disinfection, Reusable Protective Clothing Based on the
Ag-Pd@MoS2 Nanozyme with Enhanced Triple-Mode Synergistic Antibacterial Effect,”
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, vol. 15, no. 14, pp. 18032–18044, Apr. 2023, doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c23130.
[8] L. Cochrane, “The curious case of the sudden Carhartt boom,” British GQ. Accessed: Jul. 02, 2024.
[Online]. Available: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/fashion/article/carhartt-brand-trend
[9] X. Zhang et al., “Breathable and Wearable Strain Sensors Based on Synergistic
Conductive Carbon Nanotubes/Cotton Fabrics for Multi-directional Motion Detection,”
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, vol. 14, no. 22, pp. 25753–25762, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c04790.
[10] N. D. Yilmaz, Ed., Smart textiles: wearable nanotechnology. Hoboken, New Jersey :
Salem, Massachusetts: John Wiley & Sons ; Scrivener Publishing, 2019.
[11] W. Cai, T. Li, and X. Zhang,
“Polyacrylate and Carboxylic Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube-Strengthened Aramid
Fabrics as Flexible Puncture-Resistant Composites for Anti-Stabbing Applications,” ACS Appl.
Nano Mater., vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 6334–6344, Apr. 2023, doi: 10.1021/acsanm.3c00738.
[12] J. Edwards, N. Prevost, A. French, M. Concha, A. DeLucca, and Q. Wu,
“Nanocellulose-Based Biosensors: Design, Preparation, and Activity of
Peptide-Linked Cotton Cellulose Nanocrystals Having Fluorimetric and Colorimetric Elastase
Detection Sensitivity,” Engineering, vol. 05, pp. 20–28, Jan. 2013, doi: 10.4236/eng.2013.59A003.
[13] A. Nag, S. C. Mukhopadhyay, and J. Kosel, “Flexible carbon nanotube
nanocomposite sensor for multiple physiological parameter monitoring,”
Sens. Actuators Phys., vol. 251, pp. 148–155, Nov. 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.sna.2016.10.023.
No comments:
Post a Comment