Startup Stash - Be Better! Lost Hair and Luring Dark 🔦

The fashion industry and your hair have something in common. They’re both pretty frightening.  

The fashion industry produces about 60m tons of plastic each year. Meanwhile, as much as 158m pounds of human hair waste ends up in landfills or incinerators in Europe. 

Combine these two horrifying numbers and you get: A sweater made of human hair. That’s either positively creepy of creepily positive. 🥴

Founded in 2021, the Netherlands-based startup - Human Material Loop - is using waste human hair as raw material for clothing.

Would it work? 

Like lamb or alpaca wool, human hair can similarly be used as a raw material that can be treated and processed to create a textile, which can then be woven into clothing. 

In fact, the unique keratin protein fiber in human hair can be used to make clothing that is nontoxic, hypoallergenic, lightweight, and warm — qualities many are looking for in garments. 

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The hair sweater will hit markets sometime in 2023 in partnership with existing fashion brands. 

The startup is currently sourcing hair waste from salons, though it ultimately hopes to create a system where individuals can contribute their hair waste. 💇‍♂️

Besides the fact that a lot of the work is illegal, it's still fascinating to see that the dark web job boards have a lot of parallels with the normal job market.

While everyone is looking for ways to cut down on carbon, this startup is doing so by planting “better” trees (not more trees, but better ones). 

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the trees we have now. Just that mother nature probably ain’t as advanced as modern tech (sorry mother). 

Climate biotech firm Living Carbon has come up with a new, more advanced “photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid” trees are genetically engineered to grow bigger and faster — therefore being able to take more carbon out of the air than unmodified plants. 🌳

The photosynthesis enhancement does two things: 

• It improves biomass accumulation in trees by up to 53%, making it possible to capture approximately 27% more carbon.
• The trees can absorb more metals in their roots and stems. These metals naturally slow wood decay, creating more durable wood products and retaining carbon in wood for a longer period of time.

All this means that these trees can thrive in degraded or infertile land with high toxic metal concentrations. The company has been sealing land partnerships with people who wouldn’t mind them growing and tending to trees on their land. 

They’re also selling carbon credits to individuals, big companies or manufacturers who want to offset their carbon footprints. 🐾

The San Francisco-based startup’s has already raised a $21 million Series A led by Temasek.

So far, Living Carbon was growing trees in its own lab, but now it is to ready take its modified pine trees out of a lab and into the wild, planting them on private land in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The company said it is on track to supply 4 million to 5 million seedlings throughout the U.S. this year and next. 🌳