Textiles, specifically those made from animals or animal fibers in this case have a heavy toll on the environment. Cultivating these materials takes up a good deal of space and leads to a lot of manufacturing waste. Although the practice can be done with less waste on small scales, that’s not industry standard. Modern Meadow is the company that is taking on the textile industry by creating animal free products.

Now, we already have animal free fabrics. Unfortunately these are created with plastics mostly which mean that they are still not great for the earth. Modern Meadow is creating biofabricated materials. They’re using micro organisms, like yeast, and growing fabrics.

This is still a work in progress as they haven’t quite got it right yet. There’s a demand not just for functional but for the resulting material to mimic perfectly what it is replacing so this being on the market is a long time off. Still the concept is an interesting one and if perfected could go a long way to helping ease the pollution caused by the textile industry.