Bacterial cellulose culture can turn tea and sugar into fabric
25 August 2010 | Green Technology | 1 Comment
Fashion designer Suzanne Lee made an important step in the sustainable green-clothing industry by creating a new fabric grown by bacteria. This new bio-fabric called BioCouture could lead fashion designer to get their materials from laboratories instead of factories.
Suzanne Lee managed to create in a vat this new interesting fabric using a sugary green tea solution and a bacterial cellulose culture containing yeasts and other organisms.
After three weeks at the bottom of a sugar vat, a bacterial cellulose culture turned cellulose into a 15 mm thick layer, perfect to be cut and sewn. Before cutting and making a dress for example, the material has to be washed in cold water and dried for about a week on a wooden surface.
Suzanne Lee explained in an interview that this one-month process is more effective than growing and harvesting cotton for example, which takes longer. She also said that the amount of tea and sugar needed to create a dress is less than a family might consume in two weeks.
There are also some practical drawbacks the designer sees in using such bio-fabric because the material doesn’t stretch and it absorbs water turning into something uncomfortable to wear. Scientists are working to solve these problems and if they’ll succeed, we could wear in the near future clothes made of tea and sugar.
Source: NewScientist
Tags: bacterial cellulose, bio couture, bio fabric, cellulose fabric, green clothes, sugar clothes
[...] post was originally published on My Green [...]