WTIN’s Madelaine Thomas recently conducted a very interesting fireside chat with Dr. Ashley Holding, the founder and principal consultant at Circuvate. The consultancy advises stakeholders from across the fashion and textiles value-chain, including brands, manufacturers, innovative startups, and NGOs, on the development of circular and sustainable innovations, products and eco-systems. The topic of the chat was carbon capture and references a paper published on WTIN: Apparel from Air: Making Synthetic Materials from GHG by Dr. Holding (subscription required).

Thomas also interviewed Christian Schindler, director general of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF) for a separate article. He notes that the industry achieving complete carbon neutrality at this point in time, seems impossible—though it’s still important to try, saying: “It’s necessary to work to get as close as possible to net zero.”

Exploring carbon capture is another way to edge closer to carbon neutrality. Dr. Holding explains: “Carbon capture is what it sounds like. It’s about capturing carbon from the atmosphere. And there are really two ways you can think about this. One is actually direct air capture (DAC), so taking carbon emissions from the air itself, which is actually quite a difficult task. But also, for example, capturing it from the emissions which are coming directly from heavy manufacturing, from the flues or chimneys of industrial plants.”