Consortium to boost 'biomass-attributed' polyester
Fashion for Good’s latest pilot brings together Bestseller, Beyond Yoga, ON, Paradise Textiles, Environmental Resources Management, Indorama Ventures, ISCC, UPM Biochemicals and Textile Exchange to scale the mass balance attribution (MBA) model for “biomass-attributed” polyester.
Used by industries such as renewable energy and sustainable wood, mass balance attribution allows renewable and fossil-based feedstocks to be physically mixed. It tracks how much renewable input entered the system and proportionally allocates that amount to the outputs (read Sportstextiles’ in-depth feature on the subject here).
As an example, if 30% of the feedstock entering the system is renewable, a corresponding share of the output can carry a renewable attribution. In Fashion for Good’s project, this will be the biomass-attributed polyester (PET) but it could also be used for other fibres such as nylon.
The project is structured around four objectives:
• producing biomass-attributed resin and yarns
• developing a cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions model for the materials
• writing a blueprint for industry scale-up; and
• informing climate frameworks and industry standards.
Schorling Overgård, material research lead at Bestseller, said: “Polyester is our second biggest fibre by volume, which means we are continuously investigating improvements in this category. By taking part in this project, we are building experience within mass balance attribution and bio-attributed polyester. Hopefully, as we collaborate with other great partners, this can initiate pathways that can support scaling of renewable feedstocks.”
Katrin Ley, managing director at Fashion for Good, added: “We are at a point where the industry wants to move and adopt biosynthetics, but the production frameworks and commercial infrastructure haven’t caught up. The Mass Balance Demonstrator project is about closing that gap: building the impact and commercial evidence, the blueprint, and the feedback loops that will allow the MBA model to scale with integrity.”
