Dutch designer makes fashion out of cow dung

Loyal FashionUnited readers may remember an article with a similar title
three years ago – “Dutch designer makes dresses out of elephant dung”.
Though recycling has become all the craze, we are not recycling old
articles here; the truth is even better: What seemed outlandish enough to
make April 1st headlines back in 2013, has now become reality, almost
exactly – a Dutch designer makes indeed dresses out of dung, if cow dung.

“Mestic is all about transforming raw matter into future
oppertunities.”

Designer and artist Jalila Essaïdi, based in Eindhoven, has found a
novel way to tackle the problem of exceeding the phosphate ceiling because
of excess manure in the Netherlands by developing a technology with which
manure can be immediately transformed into bioplastic, biopaper and
biotextile. The new fabric called Mestic – a Dutch word combining the terms
for manure, mest and plastic – was even featured in a fashion show
organised by Essaïdi and her team at BioArt Laboratories in June this year.

The show and the new fabric met with so much enthusiasm that Mestic is
now being projected as a circular solution that will not only solve the
current problem with cow manure – which is causing excessive amounts of
harmful phosphorus and nitrogen in surface and groundwater – but will also
provide a sustainable source of biomaterials to the manufacturing industry,
including the textiles sector.

“Initially we didn’t set out to make a fibre; our goal was to create
cellulose acetate by directly pulping and acetylating the available
cellulose in manure. A logical next step was to spin this into a fibre. …
Mestic is all about transforming raw matter into future oppertunities,”
explains Essaïdi. Now, the next step is to reach out and make the new
material available worldwide.

Mestic is fashionable and cost-effective

“As far as the technology is concerned, the method of producing
bioplastic derived from manure has been patented and we are going to work
under a licence with other companies. The partners for this collaboration
are the stakeholders that benefit the most from the solution—the farmers
and government. With regard to working with brands, we are planning to make
the textile available under its own brand, and are already exploring the
possibility of other brands integrating the textile into their products”,
added Essaïdi.

Over the next few years, a prototype plant is planned to scale up and
industrialise the product. Ultimately, Mestic wants to “find a significant
positive impact to the global climate objectives” and to “make a serious
contribution to a new circular world”.

What could really make this a revolutionary new product is its price and
cost-effectiveness: “The raw material of similar fibres makes up a big
percentage of the price of the final product. In the Netherlands, for now,
farmers pay us 18 euros per square metre manure. This fee pays for the
process; so essentially we get our raw material for free.”

Seems like a dream come true for countries like India for example with a
long textile tradition and lots of cow dung to be had. Holy cow, we’d say,
and again, this is true, it is way too late in the year for another April
Fool’s joke.