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Fabric made from waste potato plants could offer a more sustainable alternative to pure cotton, as pressure grows on the fashion industry to reduce its environmental impact.

Potatoes pose a headache for farmers. The tubers are harvested and eaten, but the above-ground plant contains the poison solanine, so can鈥檛 be used for animal feed. Farmers usually pulverise or incinerate this matter before potatoes are harvested.

Now, UK start-up Fibe wants to avoid this by extracting fibres from potato stems to make a sustainable fabric. In April, it unveiled the world鈥檚 first potato thread, a blend of 75 per cent cotton and 25 per cent potato fibres.

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Fibe鈥檚 co-founder, , says it isn鈥檛 yet producing enough fibres to make a potato-only yarn. A cotton blend also helps to create fabric with the right properties for commercial use, he says. 鈥淥ur goal is to make fibres that retrofit into existing cotton-spinning machines.鈥�

The approach began as a project by a group of design engineering students, including Gal-Shohet, at Imperial College London. Tasked with designing a sustainable business concept, the group started to investigate using waste plants to create a more sustainable alternative to cotton. The students hit upon potato plants as a waste crop because they are produced at scale all over the world, are rich in fibres and their foliage has no other practical use. They decided to turn their idea into a business upon graduating in 2022.

Potatoes are the in the world, but create around 150 million tonnes of waste plant matter per year. Fibe says it has developed a new way to extract the fibres using a biological process, rather than just chemicals. 鈥淲e are controlling the biodegradation process, in a way that yields us fibres,鈥� says Gal-Shohet.

Once the raw fibres are extracted, they are cleaned and graded to produce soft balls. The potato fibres are very similar in quality to cotton, says Gal-Shohet. However, because the land is already being used to grow potatoes, potato fibres require 99.7 per cent less water and emit 82 per cent fewer carbon emissions, as well as needing no additional land, according to Fibe鈥檚 internal analysis.

Fibe鈥檚 process could be used to extract fibres from other plants as well, says Gal-Shohet. The team is already experimenting with peas and hemp, he says.

To date, the firm has received almost 拢2 million in investment and grant funding, including from Tin Shed Ventures, the venture capital arm of clothing brand Patagonia. In July, it was awarded 拢15,000 in prize money by Fashion District, a London-based fashion collective.

Gal-Shohet says Fibe is in the final stages of agreeing a deal with a well-known brand to jointly develop commercial potato fabric. The company aims to build a pilot production plant in the UK in 2025, with products available from 2026.

at the University of Leeds in the UK, who has worked with Fibe, says industry demand for sustainable fibres is growing, but the company will need to prove its potato fibres have the 鈥渓ength, fineness and strength鈥� to compete with cotton. 鈥淔or a fibre to be successful to be made into a product, these are the key parameters,鈥� he says.

Cost is also a crucial factor. Gal-Shohet says Fibe yarn will initially be more expensive than cotton because production will be at a far smaller scale, but he says price parity will be possible once production scales up. However, Tausif says a low starting price will be important to entice brands to place big orders.