Intensive farming in many parts of the world oversaturates the soil with nutrients from manure. This excess manure is an acute problem which needs to be dealt with in order to avoid major environmental catastrophes.
The textile industry also has outrageous environmental costs, characterized by devastating and unsustainable agricultural practices like growing cotton and cutting forests.
These two of the most polluting industries in the world are being radically transformed with one single idea: Inspidere B.V. has developed a method to retrieve and convert cellulose from dairy cow manure into regenerated cellulose fibers, a method known as Mestic®. A solution which turns this acute agricultural problem of waste into a sustainable source of raw material for the textile industry. This fiber is 100% biodegradable, produced from manure-derived cellulose and processed using organic solvents won from manure.
The big brands in the Fashion industry all have sustainability goals which they’ve set for the next decade. These goals involve the source materials being 100% circular. Yet, current sustainable alternatives cannot scale to meet their demands. This is where Mestic® adds its value and will be a game changer. A single dairy cow produces 26.000kg of manure annually, a tiny country like the Netherlands has 4 million cows. Locked away in global excess manure there is enough cellulose to supply global fiber demand ten times over!
We have no direct competition for the use of manure as a source material for cellulose and we’ve patented the method to secure our position.
Mestic® is a threat to the business model of our competitors (which we consider to be the current cellulose fiber industry) because currently cellulose sources (like wood or cotton) make up 44% of the cost to produce a fiber. Our model depends on cow manure (our cellulose-containing source-material) being provided for free or at a lower rate than other cellulose-based source-material. Allowing us to produce a sustainable fiber at or below market price.
Mestic® shows unprecedented emission reductions, reducing significant GWP in both the agricultural sector and the textile industry. A single t-shirt produced through this method reduces emissions by 1kg of CO2 equivalents. Based on these results, and the power to change current practices, Mestic won among others the Global Change award, the Clim@ competition by European Investment Bank and our director Jalila Essaidi was nominated for the 2019 EU prize for women innovators.
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