When you think of sustainable fashion, what comes to your mind? Maybe it’s checking the tag for the green recycling symbol or researching brands before buying. Perhaps you try to avoid overconsumption or indulging in fast fashion. For team EcoFashion, they thought of all of the above and more for their winning research proposal on circular textiles at the New York Academy of Sciences.
As a part of the Junior Academy at the NYAS, high school students Alexander Berman of New York, Mariia Hryhurko of Ukraine, Rachita Jain of India, Altynay Nurmunkhanmet of Kazakhstan, Sofía Ricuarte of Colombia, Sylvia Xu of New Mexico and mentor Xanthi Chouliara of Greece worked together on an innovation challenge entitled “Circular Textiles.”
From February 18 to April 20, these students were tasked with finding an environmental standards-based solution to the over 87% of textiles that end in landfills. While textiles are found anywhere from home furnishings to filtration systems, EcoFashion narrowed the challenge down to the industry’s overuse of water and chemical-intensive processes for fabric development.
“I chose this challenge because, for me, sustainability and fashion had been great inspirations and passions of mine for a long time,” Ricuarte said.
Ricuarte recalled working on past projects that were not passion driven, however, regards those entities as successful and far more meaningful.
“I started to look in between the lines to find a passion for it and work really hard to deliver the best that I can. This was more personal and emotional for me because that was a main interest and one of my main passions as a person and as a student, as everything,” Ricuarte said.
The solution they proposed was three-fold: optimize lyocell fabric production, create awareness by developing an EcoThreads app and continue refining the solution through expert feedback. Each member within Ricuarte’s group contributed to different parts of the project, whether it was literature review or managing the intermediate deadlines required by the Junior Academy.
What set EcoFashion apart from the 60+ teams was the thoroughness of their work, including a life cycle assessment led by Ricuarte and the balance between scientific and social priorities through EcoThreads led by Jain, according to the team members.
“I tried to be as open-minded as possible,” Jain said. “From the beginning, we had zero ideas. It was only after we formed the team when I told all of them let’s look at four or five already available ideas or technologies that you find interesting and maybe we can work with them.”
Between school, other extracurriculars and competing in the challenge, the team had to work across multiple time zones. Oftentimes, only two or three team members would be available to talk online. The team finished the 10 week timeline without meeting as a whole group. In this, they divided research needed to complete the presentation, executive summary and as well as the personal reflection deliverables.
“The entire project was quite difficult because it was the first time I was introduced to deep research,” Jain said. “It was particularly hard that I was a team lead, so I had to manage the entire team and I had to make it so that everybody can put out their best work and everybody is able to show the best of their abilities.”
Winners of the challenge, EcoFashion received the opportunity to present in front of NYAS representatives among the three other teams who won the innovation challenges during the 2023-24 academic year.
“It’s not only working on a project because you want to win it or because you need the certificate,” Ricuarte said. “But in the future, when you’re a professional and you have all of those resources and connections, you can actually make that or contribute to something. It’s really great emotionally to also feel that it is working, and it’s something that has great scalability.”
While scientific inquiry piqued the interests of team members, especially regarding future careers and opportunity for research, the unanimous highlight was the sense of accomplishment and camaraderie at an international level.
“It’s really interesting to meet up with people that live in other continents, and it’s just so great to hear them have an opinion on what you say and to see how you can connect with people that are so far away but have really similar interests,” Ricaurte said.
