If this is beginning to sound a bit like 3D printing, that’s the idea. According to unspun, just a few minutes’ worth of finishing steps are needed to complete the process. The 3D machine is fed directly with yarn. It can weave a pair of pants to order in 10 minutes, from scratch. The 3D weaving machine is a robotics-enabled device inspired by additive manufacturing principles.
The new round of funding will “support implementation of unspun’s innovative 3D weaving technology Vega™, which will help brands realize a zero-inventory, onshored, circular and automated supply-chain for woven products,” unspun reports.
The National Science Foundation also provided seed funding in 2018. For those of you keeping score at home, a substantial number of previous investors are also on board, including Josh Buckley, Lachy Groom, 50Y, the Mills Fabrica, Novetex, and Straubel Foundation.
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To get them off the ground, unspun has just raised $14 million in a Series A funding round led by firm Lowercarbon Capital, along with Climate Capital, SOSV, Signia Ventures and MVP Ventures. Unspun is now turning its attention to the fabric waste angle, with the launch of its new trademarked Vega 3D weaving machines. The discarded rolls account for about 60% of the total. That may sound somewhat exaggerated, but FabScrap’s assessment also includes whole rolls of unused fabric, in addition to leftover scraps from cutting. “According to FabScrap, the nonprofit fabric up-cycler, ‘for every pound that we throw away as a consumer, a business throws away 40 pounds.'” The Harvard Business School took stock of the fabric scrap situation in 2021 and cited this assessment: Still, even if retailers and consumers can pair up in some form of supply-demand perfection, a staggering amount of waste will continue to occur on the production side, when scraps of fabric are discarded after patterns are cut.
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Gabardi also provided an overview of recent e-commerce, technology and software improvements that can help reduce throwaways by enabling retailers to align their buys more closely with consumer demand. Writing for ELUXE Magazine last year, reporter Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi drew an un-pretty picture of the unsold goods problem. … 3D Weaving BetterĪside from motivating consumers to stop throwing away their clothes, the on-demand production model also practically eliminates the tremendous amount of waste that happens when retailers order too many items at the beginning of a season, only to throw out the unsold ones at the end. Between the custom fit and the high but relatively affordable price tag of $200 or so, presumably consumers would be motivated to keep their jeans practically forever. The company leverages 3D scanning to precisely fit jeans for individual buyers, and manufactures them on demand. Unspun launched in 2015 with an initial mission to help reduce waste at the consumer end. The United Nations Environmental Programme states that “the number of times a garment is worn has declined by 36 per cent in 15 years,” indicating the increasing grip of throwaway culture on fashion. To solve the problem, we must reinvent fashion itself,” they add.Ī good deal of that waste happens at the consumer end, when people throw out clothes that still have some wearable life in them. “The fashion industry is one of the major contributors of plastic microfibres entering our oceans.
“Every second, the equivalent of a rubbish truck load of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill.” “Each year millions of tonnes of clothes are produced, worn, and thrown away,” notes the non-profit organization Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The problem of waste in the fashion industry has been receiving a lot of attention of late, and for good reason. A waste-free 3D weaving microfactory could be coming soon to a neighborhood near you (photo courtesy of unspun).
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