February 02,2023 EVENT

Inside HIGHLACT®
Can you imagine a future where it’s okay to throw things away?

Our aim for the future is to realize an eco-friendly life quite naturally
without having to give up on being stylish or change lifestyle.

In this JOURNAL, we discuss the idea of clothes that can be thrown away, which was the theme of our booth at the recent EcoPro 2022 event.
 
The most-asked question from the audience was “Why is it okay to throw it away?” Join us as we explain the concept of HIGHLACT® and a future where it’s okay to throw fashion items away.

What is the actual state of the fashion industry? Clothes weighing about the same as 75 Tokyo Domes are discarded!


Every year, the fashion industry sets color and theme trends two years ahead of time, based on which, the directionality of materials is determined one to one-and-a-half years ahead in advance. After that, each brand seems to proceed to announce the next collection, and this trend cycle is getting faster every year with the rise of fast fashion. Actually, this is causing the problem of massive fashion waste.
https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/
 
Worldwide, a total of about 92 million tons of clothes are thrown away every year.
You may find it difficult to figure imagine what that looks like.
 
Surprisingly, it corresponds to the weight of about 75 Tokyo Dome stadiums!
 
In addition, a huge amount of used clothes exported in the form of donations have been sent to developing countries, causing an international problem! Furthermore, discarded clothes are buried in sand without being decomposed, causing serious problems such as soil contamination and generation of toxic gases when incinerated.

The textile industry accounts for 8-10% of global CO2 emissions

There are probably few people who have wondered if clothes we are wearing every day are actually affecting global warming directly.
 
The fact is, however, that the textile industry that makes our favorite clothes is contributing to large amounts of CO2 emissions.
CO2 is emitted not only in the process of manufacturing clothing materials, making clothes and transporting them, but also in the discarding process.
 
The amount of such emissions accounts for 8-10% of global CO2 emissions.

What only HIGHLACT® made from corn-derived polylactic acid (PLA) can do


1. Throwing away clothes leads to CO2 reduction!
 
The HIGHLACT® we provide is made from corn-derived PLA. Corn absorbs CO2 in its growing process, which offset the amount of CO2 generated when it is burned to achieve so-called carbon neutrality.
Therefore, it can be said that HIGHLACT® is an environmentally friendly material even when you throw away clothes that have finished their roles.
 

2. Making clothes leads to CO2 reduction!
 
The amount of CO2 emissions resulting from the production of PLA, the raw material for HIGHLACT®, is 7 times less than that resulting from the production of polyester. CO2 emission resulting from making clothes is a serious problem for the fashion industry, but it is expected that simply replacing normally used materials with PLA will lead to considerable CO2 reduction!
 

Hypothetically, simply by replacing all the polyester clothes distributed in Japan with HIGHLACT®, we will be able to reduce CO2 emissions resulting from raw material production by about 2 million tons per year.
 
This is equivalent to the amount of CO2 emitted by 1 million Japanese people in a year.
 

3. Biodegradability decomposes materials into soil under certain conditions!
 
One of the interesting properties of PLA is that it decomposes into water and CO2 under certain conditions.
In our experiment, as shown in this photo, a 100% PLA T-shirt broke into pieces in 6 days at a compost temperature of 68°C and with moisture content of around 50%.
 
How did you enjoy this JOURNAL?
We believe that HIGHLACT® will serve as a shortcut to sustainable fashion.
 
What do you think?
We hope this has given you for thought!