Covalent Carbon Catching Glasses Offer A Sight Of The Future Of Fashion

Skin is controversial material, and not just because cows have to die to produce it. Or because tanning requires toxic chemicals like chromium, which sometimes discharged directly into local waterways. No, the worst part about skin, environmental activists say, is that it is a major contributor to climate change.

Animal husbandry is thought to be responsible for 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Dry, the luxury fashion conglomerate that owns storied leather-loving brands such as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, said in environmental report 2020 that leather production and processing is by far the largest contributor to its carbon footprint. And when the Amazon burned down in 2019, the fire is blamed at least partially on cattle ranching operations, and some big brands including H&M and Timberland swear to stop sourcing the skin from the region.

Alternatives are available to the fashion industry, but fossil fuel-based polyurethane and PVC leave something to be desired. All of the attractive plant-based vegan skins, whose manufacturers claim to emit fewer greenhouse gases during production, are also blended with synthetic oil products, making them more harmful than their cruelty-free marketing implies. With all the press around prototype products from Adidas and Stella McCartney, you’d be forgiven for thinking you could already afford a lab-made leather wallet or Stan Smith’s mushroom leather shoes, but the materials are still struggling to make their way to commercial viability.

For now, there is only one truly innovative and eco-friendly vegan skin that you can click to purchase directly from the internet. AirCarbon, a carbon-negative material made using methane-eating marine organisms, hit the market a year ago in the form of sunglasses, wallets, and laptop and phone sleeves.

In an industry known for hyping even the most mundane of drip products (another recycled water bottle jacket, anyone?), the reception for a new brand, called covalent, surprisingly turned off. That could probably be attributed to the CEO of the startup that made AirCarbon, Newlight Technologies Mark Herrema, who brought the coolest California vibe to our interview. When I noticed his relaxed demeanor, he chuckled and pointed out that he had been working on this material for a full 18 years. After all, with six funding rounds under his belt, the last of which was $45 million, he’s past the hype stage and into the just do it stage.

Literally: In August, Newlight announced a partnership with Nike to explore the use of AirCarbon. nike, which says 70 percent of its emissions are encased in its materials, is one of the many major fashion brands to have committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030.

Herrema says the idea that would eventually lead to AirCarbon came to him while he was at Princeton in the early 2000s. He studied politics, but some digestive problems prompted him to start researching diets and food systems. He discovered that a cow could burp up to 500 liters methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere every day. He envisioned the methane’s market value of more than $20,000 per year from a large farm vaporizing into the air, and saw a business opportunity.

As it turned out, a hundred years earlier, scientists had discovered that there are organisms that feed on greenhouse gases and store that energy in their cells in the form of a molecule called polyhydroxybutyrate, or PHB. And these molecules, when you isolate them, can actually melt, Herrema said. This means that it can be printed onto any type of material in any color, from sheets like leather, to fibers, and solid shapes like sunglasses.