Photo Gallery The Problem with Cotton
The Swiss firm Freitag is best known for its bags made from old truck tarpaulins. But the company's founders also sought to make robust trousers for their workers without relying on cotton -- and a French flax field provided them with a solution. This machine processes the harvested straw.
As this picture shows, thread is subsequently produced. Flax only needs rain water to grow, while cotton typically needs to be watered at great cost. In Italy and Tunisia, the flax thread is interwoven with modal and hemp fibers and then dyed.
Textile workers in Poland stitch together the trousers. European production comes at a price, however: One pair costs 190.
"We're at the absolute limit when it comes to the price", says company head Daniel Freitag. He sees his product as an example of how to forego cotton and mass production.
This is what the jeans look like after a week on the compost pile. According to the company, they should completely decompose -- except for the buttons, which have to be removed prior to composting.
A new idea could then turn this compost into tights. Thanks to a process currently being developed by researchers at Germany's University of Hohenheim, chicory root could be used as the basis for future synthetic materials. The root is a by-product of chicory cultivation and could replace crude oil in plastic production.
This bag is also designed to return to the earth at some point. With the exterior made of compressed coconut fibers, the bag contains no leather and only small amounts of cotton.
The interior is constructed from rubber, which makes the bag waterproof. The Dutch firm reWrap produces the bags in a workshop in Amsterdam.
The handle is made from walnut and polished with beeswax. Just like the buttons on jeans, the handle is screwed on. The screws must be removed before decomposition. Only the inner lining is made of cotton, but it is organically grown.
Despite being almost the same color and pattern as the bag, this is in fact a shoe made of cork. "It's actually not really a material very suited to shoemaking," says Pedro Lima of Ultrashoes. His shoes are available on the German market under the name of Fairticken.
When cork is thin enough for shoes, it breaks quickly -- but otherwise it is too thick for shoe production. That's why the shoes used to be strengthened with plastic. "The result was that we got a shoe that looked natural, but was actually mostly made of plastic," says Lima.
Meanwhile, the company has made progress. Instead of plastic, it uses organic cotton to make the cork tougher. The tapering is made from recycled plastic bottles while the soles are made from old car tires.
