When designer Batoul Al-Rashdan tells people she makes clothes out of ground olives and onion peels, some look at her with raised eyebrows.
“It’s definitely a conversation starter,” says the founder of Jordanian fashion house Studio BOR, laughing. “But once [people] learn more about it, they are like, ‘Okay, interesting.’”
Al-Rashdan has been talking a lot about her work lately. Her plant-based dresses, bags and other accessories have graced runways around the world in recent years and garnered her a slew of awards. The creations are purposefully designed to decay over time, setting them apart from the mountains of long-lasting synthetic textiles clogging up landfills across the globe.
“These [clothes] are not meant to last forever,” says Al-Rashdan, who recently took part in a mentorship programme hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partner Fashion Trust Arabia. “They have served their purpose. It’s okay for them to go away.”
Al-Rashdan is part of a wave of designers, many young, aiming to reduce the mounting toll that waste from the fashion and textile sector is taking on the planet. Globally, clothing production has more than doubled since 2000, feeding pollution, stoking climate change, and gobbling up natural resources and wild spaces. Many are hopeful an emerging group of eco-conscious designers can help nudge the sector away from its obsession with cheap, disposable textiles, which experts say is at the root of its environmental problems.
“Much of the world needs to completely rethink its relationship with clothes,” says Sami Dimassi, UNEP’s Regional Director for West Asia. “The throwaway culture that dominates fashion needs to end if we’re not only going to protect the planet but also protect ourselves.”
On 30 March, the world will mark the International Day of Zero Waste, which explores ways to reduce the more than 2 billion tonnes of trash humanity produces each year. This year’s observance will focus on the fashion and textile sector and the perils of fast fashion, the business model that prizes the breakneck production of inexpensive, on-trend clothes.
It’s a theme that is close to the heart of Hazem Kais, a 31-year-old designer from Beirut, Lebanon. The head of fashion house GoodKill, he has long worried about fashion’s impact on the Earth.
“Everything we have done is coming back to [haunt] us,” says Kais, who recently worked with UNEP experts to reduce the amount of fabric he uses in his garments. “It’s too late to even question that we have to be more sustainable.”
Kais runs a small operation focused on durable, custom pieces, which he says are inherently more sustainable than the mass-produced clothes that dominate the fashion industry. He has also moved away from many harsh chemical dyes, which can leech into the environment, polluting land, sea and air. Instead, he often colours his clothes with extracts of things like sage, walnut and pomegranate.
Kais, whose neighbourhood was rocked by shelling during the recent escalation of hostilities in the region, says he finds a measure of peace in the dyeing process. It includes boiling produce to create the deep greens and browns that characterize his latest collection, due out in a few months.
“It’s my morning ritual,” he says. “Plus, it’s part of a natural cycle. If we can [dye clothes this way], why wouldn’t we?”
To support more businesses like GoodKill, UNEP launched the West Asia Sustainable Fashion Academy in 2021. It has so far provided mentoring and training to 150 up-and-coming designers, fashion school students, small business owners and non-profit groups, helping them make clothes more sustainably. It has shown participants how to source environmentally friendly fabrics, extract pigments from plants, use fewer resources and get creative in their choice of materials.
The academy also helped the fashion design school at the Lebanese American University incorporate sustainability into its curriculum. One designer fashioned a collection out of paint brush bristles; another made a fur-like coat out of shoelaces. Experts concede the fashion industry needs to completely overhaul its business model to become more sustainable. While relatively small, they believe efforts like the West Asia Sustainable Fashion Academy are a good place to start that process.
“These designers are the future of the industry,” says UNEP’s Dimassi. “If we can show them a more sustainable way to make clothes, the hope is that those practices will one day become the mainstream.”
The fashion academy is part of a broader UNEP effort to make the fashion industry more sustainable. UNEP’s work includes supporting and informing governments, addressing overproduction and overconsumption, and assisting industry stakeholders in developing countries, particularly smaller businesses, in shifting towards circular business models to reduce their environmental footprint.
Every year, 92 million tonnes of textile waste is produced globally. This equates to a garbage truck full of clothing incinerated or sent to landfills every second, according to the non-profit Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Much of that unwanted clothing winds up in developing countries – often under the guise of recycling – where it slowly rots, leaching chemicals and microplastics into soils and waterways. Meanwhile, the fashion industry alone is responsible to up to 8 per cent of all greenhouse emissions and is one of the world’s most-voracious consumers of water.
To reduce its environmental footprint, a 2023 UNEP report found the fashion industry must make fewer clothes in overflowing markets, design more durable garments, avoid the use of hazardous chemicals, prevent the shedding of microfibres, divert clothes away from landfills through reuse and recycling programmes, and discourage overconsumption.
“Fashion has one of the most powerful marketing engines around and it’s message is simple: buy, buy, buy,” says Dimassi. “That message needs to change if we’re to have any hope of making the industry more sustainable.”
In recent years, many mainstream designers have begun to embrace sustainability. A growing number of fashion brands and clothing manufacturers have set goals aligned with a UN charter designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the fashion sector. Others have taken important steps to reduce pollution and lessen their impact on nature.
In February, industry professionals, including from English fashion house Stella McCartney, led a UNEP-hosted workshop on sustainable fashion in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The event showed young designers how to ethically source material, use more circular business practices and communicate about the importance of sustainability.
Al-Rashdan, the designer from Jordan, attended that workshop, which she called “an eye-opener.
“It was very inspiring to see how other designers are sourcing their materials [and] tackling sustainability from different perspectives.”
An architectural engineer by trade, she began experimenting with plant-based textiles in 2015, eventually figuring out how to turn waste produce into a biodegradable material. Al-Rashdan then feeds the material into a 3D printer, creating an array of accessories. Among other things, she has forged classical-looking Jordanian coins out of onion peels (still going strong two years later) and a handbag out of a combination of planet-based materials (a little worse for wear after being taken around the world). She also collaborated with renowned designer Tony Ward on a wispy biodegradable dress that debuted at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week, one of the pre-eminent events on the fashion calendar.
For now, next-generation materials like the ones she makes represent a niche market. But the consultancy BCG says by 2030, they could account for 8 per cent of the global market for fibres, equivalent to 13 million tonnes of material.
Al-Rashdan says she’s encouraged to see mainstream design houses embrace sustainability but concedes there’s still a long way for the fashion industry to go.
“I’m hopeful,” she says. “Every change, even a small one, counts.”
International Day of Zero Waste, observed on 30 March, was established through UN General Assembly Resolution 77/161 and is jointly facilitated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). This day aims to raise awareness about the critical role of waste management and responsible consumption and production in achieving sustainable development. It calls on individuals and organizations to adopt a life-cycle approach, focusing on reducing resource use and environmental emissions at every stage of a product's life cycle.
