How Canada’s sustainable fashion startups are unravelling our throwaway clothing culture

Paul Long started his fashion brand humbly, to say the least.

It was 2013, and he needed a place to sell his wool T-shirts.

He rented a vacant lot in Victoria, BC and, because he couldn’t afford new materials, built a shed out of reclaimed wood. He didn’t know it at the time, but that act of thrift would soon become the core of his business.

His plan, at first, was to create a line of wool basics that were made entirely in Canada — from material through to production. But his timing was ill-fated: while nearly a century ago Canada was home to the largest woolen mill in the British Empire (Dominion Woollens & Worsteds in Cambridge, ON), facilities were closing just as Long was starting his company. 

“As a lot of these manufacturers were closing, they were doing closing-out sales,” Long told Canada’s National Observer. But he had to act fast: “I just bought up as much wool as I could.”

That wool lasted long enough for Long to launch his brand, ANIÁN, from a factory in Vancouver. But after that material ran out, he began his search for another sustainable option. 

“That really sent me on a global education of how the global sourcing and textile world works,” Long said. He tried fabrics from all over the world. 

“And then, as I was deep into that research, I realized that people used to actually recycle wool,” he said, “and that it can be recycled anywhere from eight to 10 times.”

It took Long nearly three years to fully transition from the last of his Canadian wool to recycled material, which he now sources from Italy — the epicentre of textile recycling, thanks to a small Tuscan town called Prato.

“That was the big transition moment where I was like, ‘Wow, this is so cool: I can actually use old wool sweaters to make beautiful new garments,’” Long said.

“And if you look at our clothing, you would never be able to see or even think that it was made of recycled textiles.”

The climate impact of fast-fashion suppliers serving up low-priced clothing to trend-chasing consumers is rising, according to a new study.

Apparel-sector emissions rose 7.5 per cent to 944 million tonnes in 2023 from a year prior, accounting for nearly two per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the Apparel Impact Institute said last month. 

It blamed the ultra-fast fashion boom and a growing reliance on virgin polyester, “while recycled alternatives remain underutilized.”

Less power, water

Recycled wool uses less power and less water than creating the textile from scratch. 

It also reduces the need for animals with fur that we turn into wool (for example, sheep contribute 75 per cent of wool’s environmental impact due to the methane and nitrous oxide that they produce). 

Overall, recycled wool saves an estimated 60 per cent of the virgin alternative’s negative impacts. On an annual basis, recycled textiles can save 60 million kilowatts of energy, 18,000 tonnes of CO2, and 500,000 cubic metres of water worldwide.

Aside from production, there’s also the fact that recycling clothing helps keep it out of the landfill. A whopping 99 per cent of the world’s garments get thrown out (see BBC video below), destined to be incinerated and release CO2 into the atmosphere; using recycled materials diverts some of that waste.

In addition, a higher-quality, ethically made garment such as a coat or button-up shirt from ANIÁN will last decades, lessening the wearer’s purchasing and discarding frequency.

“This is a shirt that you’re going to be able to buy and wear for the next 10 to 20 years,” Long said. “And it just gets better the harder you wear it.”

ANIÁN is still based in Victoria, though these days the operation has moved on from its ramshackle shed into a flagship store on the city’s main shopping drag, Johnson Street, across from the likes of beloved Canadian shoe company John Fluevog. 

The brand also has a shop in Vancouver, and most recently opened a third store in Calgary. It’s proof that people are willing to pay more for well-made clothing. 

“We have really focused on the fact that, yes, our clothing is made in Canada, and yes, it is made from recycled textiles,” he said, “but most importantly, it makes you look beautiful.” 

Stronger together

Textile-recycling innovation might be coming from Italy, but there are also companies creating their own fabric revolution right here in Canada.

Stephanie Lipp and her partner Leo Gillis started MycoFutures — their mushroom-leather company — somewhat by accident.

The duo was living in Bonavista, Newfoundland, where they had started a gourmet mushroom farm.

One day, Gillis was cleaning out the grow room and came across a set of root structures — called mycelium — that never sprouted into mushrooms. 

He decided that he’d spread it out on the lawn for compost, so he grabbed a shovel to break it up, but the shovel wasn’t strong enough. Then he tried an ax, which also didn’t work.

“Out of frustration, he hit it with our lawn mower, thinking it would rip up into ribbons,” Lipp recalled. 

“And it broke the lawn mower because it was so strong. Then we knew we had fungi that had these really different properties to it.”

They had heard of a few other companies experimenting with mushroom-based leather, so they pivoted their venture to focus on mycelium textiles. By the end of 2021, they had a prototype and began talking to customers — many of whom were already well-established within the fashion industry.

“That’s when we learned that it [the lack of eco-friendly fabric] was a really massive problem — from independent artisans up to big, well-known luxury brands,” she said. “The materials industry needed to change, the fashion industry needed to change, and we could contribute to that through mushrooms.”

Compared to cow leather, Lipp said mycelium leather can see an 85 to 94 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions. An average square metre of cow leather generates about 73 kilograms of CO2, versus five kilograms for the same patch of MycoFutures leather. 

Up to 97 per cent of MycoFutures’ waste streams also get turned into secondary products like biochar and myceliated compost which can be used in farms. Another upside is the lack of material waste.

“A cowhide is a very irregular shape, and up to 40 per cent of the actual cow hide can be discarded,” explained Lipp. “But because we’re growing customizable sheets that are in a consistent size and shape, we can reduce that by 80 per cent.”

MycoFutures moved operations to Montreal in January, where a 3,000-square-foot facility allows it to oversee a stack of technologies — from lab work to maintain and improve its mycelium strains, to the non-toxic tanning and finishing — and control its intellectual property.

While it launched a limited-edition leather travel pouch — a proof-of-concept of sorts — the company aims to sell to other businesses rather than consumers. 

Brands (mostly bag and accessory companies, at least for now) have placed orders and are waiting for their first shipments of MycoFutures leather. 

And while their clients are based around the world, they do have a few things in common.

“They’re very boutique, sustainability-minded, and technology-forward,” she said. “They all tend to share that.”

The eventual hope is to supply leather to a wider range of enterprises, but for now, Lipp said, MycoFutures is focused on slow and steady growth.

Natural is in

Vancouver-based CanFil Textile Fiber Corp. also uses plant materials for its textiles. Pineapple leaves and abaca (also known as manila hemp) are commonly used to make fibres in the Philippines — the home country of CanFil founder Pinky Piorque. 

After moving to Canada, she realized she couldn’t find products anywhere that were made with these materials from her homeland. So she decided to bring them to the West, working with a facility back in the Philippines and launching CanFil in 2023.

“Because it’s natural,” said Piorque, “it is totally biodegradable.” Aside from using discarded plant products to create its materials, Canfil fibres — fabric, yarn, and crochet — are also dyed with natural ingredients like turmeric and mango leaves, which means they’re devoid of the harsh, environmentally toxic dyes so often used in production.

CanFil is still in its infancy, so business is modest; Piorque said she is currently seeking funding to help her scale up.

Food waste to leather

Similar to MycoFutures, Toronto-based husband-and-wife duo Jason Robinson and Natalie Ashdown have also developed a plant-based leather — though theirs is not made from mycelium. Instead, the chemical engineers found a way to turn non-food-grade agricultural waste products, such as oils and starches, into what they call bio-leather.

“There was a lot of technology around recycling, but there wasn’t anything that was significantly offsetting things like carbon emissions and pollution,” explained Robinson.

“And so we went to the source of the material — and that is to use plants to create chemistry, instead of using fossil-based raw materials to create petrochemistry.”

Their company, Evoco Ltd, also makes a bio-foam that has become a popular option for insoles in footwear. 

Brands that use their technology range from apparel and shoemaker Vans to luxury fashion house Michael Kors.

“Now we are at projects looking at anything from automotive to furniture,” Robinson said. “And even in other consumer-goods applications, such as sustainable bra pads.”

Since starting in 2016 in Robinson and Ashdown’s kitchen, Evoco has grown significantly: it now has its own production facility in Vietnam, and is also working with factories in Europe and other parts of Asia. 

Its products are, according to Robinson, 70 per cent less carbon-intensive than their petrochemical equivalent.

Like their fabric-innovation peers, Robinson and Ashdown are driven by the mission to make the notoriously pollutive fashion industry more sustainable.

“We saw the massive opportunity,” he said. “And believed in the vision and believed in the product — and how we could make a difference.”