More Amazing Sustainable Fabrics Added to Our Selection: Tulle Made of Recycled Fishing Nets
Ghost fishing is the prolonged effect of fishing nets that have been abandoned, lost or discarded (ALD) on the natural habitats of marine species by fishermen.
The main reasons why our oceans are littered with fishing nets are:
- Poor maintenance: Many fisheries don’t bother to repair or even clean fishing nets. They just throw them away into the sea
- No access to recycling: Fishermen will often discard unwanted fishing nets by simply throwing it overboard instead of looking for a recycling facility
- Harmful fishing methods: Bottom trawling, an extremely destructive fishing technique, consists in dragging a large, weighted net along the seafloor in order to capture fish more quickly. This renders fishing nets a short life, which then earns them the chance to also be discarded into the sea.
Let’s take the Maldives as a practical example of how terrible the effect of simply dumping damaged fishing nets into the sea is. The Maldives is home to diverse marine life such as the critically endangered hawksbill turtle and the endangered green turtle. In the short video below, you can see how turtles get entangled in dumped fishing nets.
This man made phenomenon is constantly trimming marine life populations, adding many of them to the already alarmingly large list of endangered species.
What if you had the chance to make a difference? Well, now you do! We have just added to our selection of tulle fabrics made from the waste of fishing nets! The thread used to weave these fabrics is called Lifecycle Poliamide.
You can get these inspiring new sustainable fabrics in two versions: with elastane here and without elastane here.
Lifecycle Polyamide is a CRADLE TO CRADLE CERTIFIED™ GOLD thread. Cradle to Cradle® is a consistent recycling protocol, in which no waste is produced.
Instead, products are either brought back to biological cycles as biological nutrients or are continuously kept in technical cycles as technical nutrients.
Now you can take a step further into becoming a sustainable, conscious brand by incorporating this new symbol of the so-longed for circular economy into your next collection, with no minimum order quantity!
Like what you have read so far? Well, there is more to it!
The dyeing process of our LifeCycle Poliamide tulle fabrics is 100% natural, done with natural, compostable dyes. That’s right: no harmful chemicals in the dyeing process!
Two of the natural dyeing agents used in order to achieve different colors for your creations are well known:
Clorophyllian Extract extracted from alfalfa or other edible plants.
Chestnut leaves, fruits and husks
Yet, it turns out that colors can be extracted from lesser known plants such as:
- The Acacia Catechu, found in parts of South and Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand.
- The Sumac Gall is an abnormal growth caused by various insects of the Cynipidae family living on the trunks, leaves, or roots of certain plants, and Sumac is one of them.The galls contain gallic acid and tannins which are used in the production of inks and dyestuffs.
- Chestnuts provide dyestuff through their leaves, fruits and husks. The wood is rich in tannin, which is also used in tanning hides.
- Reseda, an annual plant belonging to the Resedaceae family. It grows abundantly throughout Europe to heights of around a meter. All parts of the plant contain a substance called Lutein, which has been used since Roman times to produce an excellent solid yellow color.
- Madder is an herbaceous perennial plant with long roots from which the dyeing pigment called Alizarian (Natural Red 8) is extracted. Since the Middle Ages and until the discovery of the synthetic Alizarian, Madder was one of the most important dyestuffs and, as such, widely grown and traded.
- Lacca, improperly known as rubber too, is obtained from the secretion of an insect (Tachardia Lacc Kerr.) that lives on the branches of various oriental trees, especially on the Ficus. The females cover the branch with a violet resinous secretion used to dye in red and purple.
Lifecycle Polyamide is a strong thread with colour fastness properties. It is also robust, abrasion-resistant and highly durable.