Low carbon clothing - the Danish tech startup hoping to clean up the fashion industry

When one thinks of excess in the fashion world, the mind may jump to overpaid models in haute couture on the runways of Paris and New York. However, the real excess of the industry happens away from the glare of the cameras, in the textile factories, shop floors and online stores where clothes are produced and consumed in their millions.

Outsourcing clothes production to China and South Asia has driven costs down dramatically, fuelling the rise of fast fashion and brands such as Boohoo and Shein. It’s a boom that has seen textile consumption rising 400 per cent over the past 20 years, accompanied by an enormous increase in the environmental damage associated with fashion.

While technology has been adopted incrementally, textile production has remained fundamentally unchanged since the invention of the power loom during the Industrial Revolution. Each year, the sector uses 215 trillion litres of water, accounting for around 20 per cent of industrial wastewater pollution worldwide. Between manufacture, dyeing, transport and waste, it’s estimated that the fashion industry is responsible for around 8 per cent of global emissions - more than aviation and shipping combined.