Growing up, I was at crossroads with my professional career. I had the choice of taking up medicine or joining the arts. Thinking I could make a difference in the creative field, I took up studies in fashion.

As a designer, I have always believed in environmental justice – as in designs carry a message of hope to amplify the current situations that exist of climate change and help create solutions – by keeping the end in mind, and automatically imbibing the three R’s of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

The fashion industry has proven to be quite an eye-opener with its scores of hidden secrets – from wastefulness to the lack of transparency. It had me torn with its ever-extending fork of dichotomy between beauty and the decay that it was causing the world.

The $3 trillion fashion industry is responsible for 20 percent of the global waste water due to its processing and textile dyeing. The processes in the fashion industry account for various stages of water pollution and wastage. Its greatest faux pas of all time is plastics. Packaging, hangers, tags, and mannequins all account for plastic waste that ends up in landfills and breaks up into bits and pieces that eventually make their way into the oceans.

Fast fashion is to be entirely blamed for the use of cheap synthetics which eventually shed microfibers during every wash. Micro-plastics are tiny particles that can range in size from  microscopic to visible by the naked eye. Micro-fibers on the other hand are fibers released due to the washing of synthetic clothes. Micro-fibers from synthetic clothes find their way into our waterways and destroy the delicate food chain that marine species are dependent on.

All over the world, researchers are staring through microscopes at tiny pieces of plastic—fibers, fragments, or microbeads—that have made their way into marine and freshwater species, both wild-caught and farmed. Scientists have found microplastics in 114 aquatic species, and more than half of those end up on our dinner plates. Now they are trying to determine what that means for human health.

The problem of plastic pollution is Herculean and it is best to do away with it completely. Recycling of plastic also produces dangerous byproducts while it still continues to exist on our planet. Therefore, alternatives to plastics need to be reimagined.

Cyanobacteria is commonly known as Blue Green Algae, living fossils and one of the first oxygen producers in the world. These microscopic organisms are found naturally in all types of water. The single-celled organisms live in fresh, brackish, and marine water, using sunlight to make their own food.

In warm, nutrient-rich (high in phosphorus and nitrogen) environments, cyanobacteria can multiply quickly, creating blooms that spread across the water’s surface. Cyanobacteria is fire resistant and highly absorbent; it is a great nitrogen fixing source for the soil and an excellent regenerative textile to displace plastic. Furthermore, it is not water intensive and does not take up large spaces of land. Each piece of algae is washed of its impurities and sculpted to form a dress whose fabric takes on a faded and washed color from the sun. The garments are organic, alive, and soft; they live and breathe like the algae that they are comprised of. With this innovation, we are presenting a regenerative choice and an alternative to plastic, and reimagining algae as textiles.

Living organisms constantly maintain their structural and biochemical integrity by the critical means of response, healing, and regeneration. Inanimate objects, on the other hand, are axiomatically considered incapable of responding to damage and healing it, leading to the profound negative environmental impact of their continuous manufacturing and trashing. With regenerative textiles, the industry is experimenting with bio films and yarn from less water-intensive crops.

Fashion has also been blamed for printing and dyeing which can pollute and waste water. It is therefore our responsibility as fashion designers to delve into the garmenting processes and help find solutions that help negate the impact of the CO2 by enabling circularity – and use nature-based solutions to resolve these pressing issues.

The ancient art of Suminagashi – ie. the “art of floating inks” – is an ancient technique that was practiced in the Japanese royal courts in the 12th century. It is a technique which requires an aqueous solution of seaweed to be held in a trough. This solution is commonly termed as ”size.” Inks extracted from the chlorophyll of discarded flower markets are splashed on the surface of the aqueous solution. The designs formed are organic with no two alike, and the viscosity of the ”size” enables one to draw beautiful patterns on its surface. The fabric is laid flat upon the “size” to absorb the inks. It is then skimmed over the surface, pulling out the fabric to reveal the pattern transferred upon it. This method serves to solve two challenges:  water wastage and water pollution, as water is contained in a trough and the natural inks eliminate the need for chemically harmful digital prints. Using this technique, 250 meters of fabric can be printed using only 50 liters of water.

Coastal communities especially from the global south have often been faced with environmental racism and loss of trade due to over-fishing from commercial fishing lines. Most families have their livelihoods dependent on the ocean. Teaching them an alternative trade which involves nature-based solutions in fashion can involve women, folks and families who benefit from the fashion industry while they practice their creative fishing.

The outreach of fashion is necessary to impart critical knowledge to inform the world not just about climate change but also the steps necessary for climate action.

So while I was at crossroads at my career decades ago, I now realize that I have successfully entwined the message of the arts with the healing of a medic to ensure that we as individuals are taking steps in the right direction and together as a community are making a huge impact.

Runa Ray is a fashion environmentalist and interdisciplinary designer who uses fashion as activism to educate and advocate for policy change. Her work centers around the Sustainable Development Goals and their intersection with fashion. She has been involved in creative projects with the United Nations, science-based organizations and nonprofits to discern the threat of climate change.

Her expertise lies in the circularity of the fashion industry, the reduce, reuse, recycle model, zero-waste initiatives, nature-based solutions and ancient and indigenous techniques that reduce our impact on the earth.

She is a featured speaker at the United Nations, and her partnership with Prince Albert II of Monaco helps find solutions for marine-protected areas.