Bananatex - A waterproof fabric made from sustainably grown banana plant fibres 

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This collection has been built by a community of passionate researchers, students, and industry professionals as part of <a href="https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/" target="_blank">World Circular Textiles Day</a> (WCTD). 


World Circular Textiles Day takes place every year on 8th October. Our vision is to galvanise the collective ambitions and goals of people, organisations and businesses to reach a fully circular textiles world by 2050. Our mission is to provide a framework for circularity stakeholders to develop and deliver a collaborative, evolving roadmap and to chart circularity’s momentum annually from the 8th of October until 2050.

What does fully circular by 2050 mean?
- Shared textile resources, in the form of products and raw materials, are kept in **continual circulation**.
- Virgin resources are **replaced with circular materials**.
- Dignity, equity, and equality for the **people** involved in all parts of the circular value chain.

We need to know where we stand today to chart how to get to 100% Circularity by 2050. What circular activity is currently happening in the textiles and apparel industry, and where in the world is it happening? The WCTD Collection aims to answer this question by building the world’s largest digital library of circular textiles case studies. 

World Circular Textiles Day is proud to be supported by our 2022-23 Circular Hero Partners:
[Lenzing](https://www.lenzing.com/), [Texaid](https://retailsolutions.texaid.com/), [Bank & Vogue](https://www.bankvogue.com/), [Usha yarns limited](https://ushayarns.com/), [The Conduit](https://www.theconduit.com/), and [Asia Pacific Rayon](https://www.aprayon.com/en/)

## Want to contribute to the WCTD Collection? Sign up and add your circular textiles activities.

World Circular Textiles Day

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Business case

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Reduced use and withdrawal of water and rate of recycling and reuse of water

Save Water (SDG6)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Producing textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

Using bio-based materials such as bioplastics, mushroom-based materials, etc.

Alternative bio-based materials and inputs

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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  Bananatex® is the world’s first durable, waterproof fabric made purely from Banana plants. Cultivated in the Philippines within a natural ecosystem of sustainable forestry, the plant requires no chemical treatments. Its self-sufficiency has made it an important contributor to reforestation of areas once eroded by Palm plantations, whilst enhancing the prosperity of local farmers.  Three years of research and development resulted in a new material that answers questions of environmental, economic and social sustainability. As an open source project Bananatex® offers a viable alternative to the synthetic fabrics that the majority of bags are made of today.  


In recent years, we have woken up to the incredibly damaging practices of the fashion industry and the scary amounts of pollution it pumps into the earth’s atmosphere, with most of today’s textile production involving plastics and petroleum.
In a bid to change the tide of decades of damage, innovators around the world have been engineering new techniques and fabrics that reduce waste and utilise existing natural materials that won’t pollute the planet once we are done with them.
Swiss bag brand QWSTION is the latest on our radar of those transforming fruit into threads. 
QWSTION Founders back in the day. Set up by Sebastian Kruit, industrial designers Christian Kaegi and Fabrice Aeberhard, graphic designer Matthias Graf and Hannes Schoenegger, since 2008 QWSTION has been dedicated to developing versatile bags for everyday use – with an understated look and a low environmental footprint.  “We chose to develop our own materials and use natural fibres wherever possible to achieve the highest sustainability,” says QWSTION, which before developing Bananatex was focused on organic cotton bags. “Using organically grown fibres and PFC-free water-repellent coatings allows us to avoid harmful substances and make healthy products.”
Next to their own high-density organic cotton canvas fabric, the brand has recently released Bananatex®, a new shell (outer layer) fabric made in partnership with Philippino farmers and Taiwanese yarn specialists.  Bananatex® is the world’s first durable, waterproof fabric made purely from Abacá plants, colloquially known as banana hemp and scientifically as Musa Textilis.
Abacá is a plant in the banana family but instead of fruit, Abacá plants produce fibres.  Cultivated in the Philippines within a natural ecosystem of sustainable forestry, Abacá plants require no pesticides, fertilizer or additional water.
This self-sufficiency has made it an important contributor to the reforestation of areas once eroded by palm plantations, whilst enhancing the prosperity of local farmers.
The fibre in its raw form is incredibly strong and durable, also making it the ideal material to produce everyday bags and rucksacks.  As an open-source cross-cultural collaboration, the Bananatex® project offers a viable alternative to the synthetic fabrics that the majority of bags are made of today.
The new material is the result of 3 years of dedicated R&D and is inspired by both Swiss modernist design traditions that aim to answer questions of environmental, economic and social sustainability and East Asian resourcefulness and material expertise.  To make Banantex, the raw fibre is transformed into a paper in a Taiwanese spinning mill which is then cut and twisted into yarn. This “paper-yarn” is then spun into fabric.  From there, the Bananatex fabric and bag designs — drawn up by QWSTION in their Zurich head office with patterns planned to minimize waste in the cutting process of individual parts — are sent off to Mrs Wan and Mr Lai who own a small factory in Taiwan and have 30 years experience in the craftsmanship of bag manufacture.  The end result of these collaborations are bags that are not only functional, waterproof and beautiful — but also biodegradable!
Keeping their designs as sustainable as possible the brand uses almost 100% natural and recyclable materials for all other components of the bags. They use Rayon, Cotton, or Nylon for belts and straps, and the metal parts are made of aluminium or steel. Beeswax is used for the bag’s coatings to make it fully water-resistant.  While some may see QWSTION’s outsourcing of expertise as unsustainable by today’s standards which call for everything to be made more locally, the brand has a strong argument…
They believe that it is more important to look at how a product is made rather than where.
“We manufacture where the know-how is,” says Christian Kaegi.
“We can contribute more to positive change by establishing where the supply chain is and get better standards.”
The brand affirms that its manufacturing processes both in the EU and Asia meet the highest ethical and environmental criteria.
In 2019, QWSTION was awarded the prestigious Design Prize Switzerland in the textile category for bananatex®.
“No matter which point of view, it’s either the design or the material and its origin that will surprise you,” adds Kaegi.
“With Banantex we have created a material that has the potential to be greater than us.” Carmen Hijosa’s Piñatex Looks Like Leather, but it’s Pineapple 

Switzerland

Europe

Philippines

Taipei

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Bananatex

Qwstion

Synthetic materials have been increasingly used as a leather replacement for making handbags and accessories for the last few decades and often end up in landfills or incinerated. Finding other alternative bio-based or renewable materials have been at the core of innovation within the textile industry. Bananatex is a fabric made from Abacá plant fibre (banana hemp or Musa Textilis). The plant requires very little water, no fertilizer, and no pesticides. Instead of producing fruits, this plant produces fibres. The raw form of this fibre is strong and durable and therefore can be used to make items such as bags, bedcovers, or fabric shoes which require durability and solidity.&nbsp;The material was co-founded by QWSTION, a Swiss bag company, by collaborating with yarn experts in Taiwan and farmers in the Philippines. They use this fabric to produce backpacks and small bags for daily use. In 2020, Banantex collaborated with companies such as shoewear brand, Good News, Softline daybeds, and Bazar Noir&nbsp;Mae&nbsp;chairs.&nbsp;