Wool

peta campaign for vegan wool featuring a woman dressed with plants

© PETA
Materials

PETA Offers $1M for Market-Ready Vegan Wool Alternative 

The animal rights group PETA launched a $1 million Vegan Wool Challenge Award this week to find the first individual, group, or company that creates a vegan wool material “visually, texturally, and functionally akin to or better than sheep’s wool.” The winning animal-free wool must be a biomaterial that is biodegradable or recyclable and has traditional wool’s advantages like maintaining body temperature, neutralising doors, and repelling moisture. Among other entry rules for the wool challenge, PETA requires the participants to demonstrate the innovative material’s commercial viability. Alternatives to animal-derived materials This vegan wool prize comes at a time when innovations in the animal-free leather category are thriving, with leather made from upcycled tamarind pods and cactus leather used to make shoes, gloves, and watches. Vegan silk is …

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Mink pelt ©Furoid SE
Non-Food

This Company is Producing Bioprinted Fur, Wool & Eyelashes Which Could Make Fur Farms Obsolete

As advancements in cell-cultured meat take the revolutionary food tech from the lab to the dinner plate, a similar revolution could be underway in the fashion industry. Scientists have completed the world’s first in vitro hair follicle inseparably linked to collagen in order to cultivate cell-based fur and wool.  With the power to make the breeding of animals for fur obsolete, startups like Furoid SE are optimizing cutting-edge techniques to “bioprint” animal fur without any cruelty to animals. The team has developed a system in which multiple single stem cells are brought together in the right conditions to spontaneously grow into a three-dimensional miniature tissue, which in this case would be a fur or wool follicle. Many countries and fashion brands are currently doing away …

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UGGs PlantPower

©Ugg
Shoes

Uggs Releases “Plant Power” Line of Shoes and Boots – in Response to Controversy?

Despite, or perhaps in response to, its controversial, historical association with the animal cruelty involved in the making of its famous, sheepskin boots, UGG is attempting to join the vegan wave, describing its new Plant Power collection as “new styles with climate neutral, plant-based materials.” Whilst some vegans might use the term “greenwashing” for such moves, the move to increase plantbased materials can only be welcomed, even if they won’t do so until 2027.

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fleece sweater

© Ruggiero Scardigno - stock.adobe.com
Non-Food

Winner of the Biodesign Challenge 2018: WOOCOA

The fashion industry is becoming more and more vegan-friendly, because more labels are eliminating animal products from their clothing. A designer prize for the best wool alternative has now been awarded to participating students from all over the world at the Biodesign Challenge 2018. The winner is “WOOCOA” from Colombia, with a wool made of hemp, coconut shells and mushrooms.

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