Biomimicry Institute

Nature figured out high-performance stretch long before we did—and without leaving any waste behind.

Fashion is still catching up. Elastane, the fibre behind your favourite stretchy jeans and activewear, is fossil-based—and even in small amounts, it’s enough to block textile recycling entirely.

Fashion for Good’s Katrin Ley breaks down how their Stretching Circularity Project is working to change that—testing bio-based alternatives to conventional elastane, and the recycling systems needed to bring them full circle.

Visit the Biomimicry Blog through the link in our bio to read the full article.

The Biomimicry Institute has released the completed case studies from its Nature of Fashion: Design for Transformation initiative, a multi-year program that began with a single question: what would the fashion industry look like if it actually operated like a natural ecosystem?

The answer that emerged from the years of pilot work across three countries points to something the industry has largely overlooked: decomposition.

With thanks to The Or Foundation, Circle Economy, Beneficial Design Institute, and

The Biomimicry Institute has released the completed case studies from its Nature of Fashion: Design for Transformation initiative, a multi-year program that began with a single question: what would the fashion industry look like if it actually operated like a natural ecosystem?

The answer that emerged from the years of pilot work across three countries points to something the industry has largely overlooked: decomposition.

With thanks to The Or Foundation, Circle Economy, Beneficial Design Institute, and

Accra’s Kantamanto Market and the nearby Korle Lagoon are both responding to a crisis they didn’t create. The Or Foundation’s documentation centers on what the lagoon’s biological systems are already revealing about the fashion system’s limits.

Accra’s Kantamanto Market and the nearby Korle Lagoon are both responding to a crisis they didn’t create. The Or Foundation’s documentation centers on what the lagoon’s biological systems are already revealing about the fashion system’s limits.

The Or Foundation

Accra’s Kantamanto Market and the nearby Korle Lagoon are both responding to a crisis they didn’t create. The Or Foundation’s documentation centers on what the lagoon’s biological systems are already revealing about the fashion system’s limits.

The Or Foundation

Breaking down to build up, just like nature does.

Beneficial Design Institute

Breaking down to build up, just like nature does.

Beneficial Design Institute

Breaking down to build up, just like nature does.

Beneficial Design Institute

Hard-to-recycle textile waste doesn’t have to be a dead end.

Circle Economy

Hard-to-recycle textile waste doesn’t have to be a

June took Nature of Fashion from Amsterdam to Berlin to London to Brussels – and the throughline across every room was the same: nature isn’t a metaphor for transformation anymore, it’s the design brief.

Swipe through for the highlights 👉

📷 Jan Khür / Abrakadabra Studio

Katapult Future Fest | Amsterdam, NL

🌱 Katapult Future Fest (Katapult Future Fest) – where investors and practitioners asked what it actually means to fund and build like an ecosystem, leaping from the traditional mechanistic view.

📷 Jan Khür / Abrakadabra Studio

Fashion For Good Innovation Fest | Amsterdam, NL

🧪 Fashion for Good’s Innovation Fest (Fashion for Good) – confirming what we’ve long believed: the innovation gap in fashion isn’t invention anymore, it’s integration.

Innovationstag Mittelstand | Berlin, DE

🔬 Innovationstag Mittelstand – we showed up to support our partners at Beneficial Design Institute as they joined a panel on knowledge transfer, talking microalgae cultivation and giving low-value textile waste a second life beyond fashion. 

Beneficial Design Institute 

London Climate Action Week | London, UK

☕ London Climate Action Week – we hosted a breakfast roundtable where the room got energized about one thing: fashion’s toughest waste challenges look different through a nature-inspired lens.

Future Fabrics Expo | Brussels, BE

🍄 Future Fabrics Expo (Future Fabrics Expo) – There was an entire section dedicated to biodegradation – fashion discovering how to fall apart well. Amanda took the stage for “Circularity and Degradation: Learning From Nature,” unpacking what the industry can borrow from nature’s oldest process: build, break down, build again.

Grateful to everyone who shared a room, a question, or a meal with us in June 🌿
For more insights into this month’s reflections head to our blog – link in bio 📖

📷 Jan Khür / Abrakadabra Studio

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when news of freedom finally reached Galveston, Texas.

Nature has always understood what this day teaches: freedom is not a moment. It is a movement, patient and persistent.

Seeds crack stone to reach the light. Rivers carve canyons one grain at a time. Roots lift sidewalks. Mycelium restores soil that was stripped bare, working unseen until the forest returns. Monarchs cross a continent no single butterfly will ever see completed, each generation carrying the journey forward.

Life always moves toward freedom. It finds the opening, makes the path, and creates conditions where more life can flourish.

Today we honor that same persistence in human history, the resilience of those who carried freedom forward across generations, and the deep ecological knowledge that guided so many on their way: navigating by the North Star, reading the moss, following the waterways.

Nature teaches us that flourishing is something we create together. So is freedom.

If we asked nature, what would it reveal about the landscapes we walk through every day?

“Every single shape, every color we see is a solution to a certain problem” – Tristan Gooley

As we AskNature to help us read the clues and signs of the more than human world natural navigator Tristan Gooley reminds us that nothing in nature is random and everything is connected.

Tune in to Episode 3 of the AskNature Podcast to unpack the two pillars of wayfinding and learn how a simple five minute walk can unlock your brain's evolutionary potential.

Listen on all major streaming platforms: https://tr.ee/8g5oicJVkV

What if nature had a seat at the table?

Not as a resource to manage but as a living partner aiding in how your organization makes decisions.

That’s the premise behind Bringing Nature on Board, a four-week AskNature Learning course facilitated by Dr. Dominique Hes, and registration is now open!

Over four sessions, you’ll explore how organizations at every scale are doing this work: learning from First Nations and Indigenous knowledge systems that have always understood Nature as a participant, examining the rise of legal personhood for natural entities, and studying real governance models drawn from 30+ organizations around the world.

By week four, you won’t just understand the concept; you’ll have a concrete action plan for your own organization.

Like Nature itself, which starts with lichen breaking rock into soil before a forest can even grow, this course is part of something larger. A movement to bring Nature’s voice into the rooms where decisions are made.

Course Dates:
Pacific Time: Mondays, August 10, 17, 24, 31 | 3:30-5pm PT
Tuesdays, Aug. 11, 18, 25, + Sept. 1 | 8:30am - 10am AEST

Available Discounts:
AskNature Hive members save $100 (discount code found in the Watering Hole)
Students save 20% — email [email protected] with a photo of your current student id.

Learn more and register today: www.biomimicry.org/asknature-learning/

We have the knowledge that we need to change our worldview, and yet we don't change. How do we change?

“It may seem simplistic to say, ‘Well, what we need is a different story.’ But what is it that has changed and guided us through history? It's stories. I can say, ‘I am going to live as if the world is a gift for which I need to be grateful, for which I need to reciprocate, for whom I am accountable.’

And if I change my mind, I can align my behaviors with that story.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer

As we AskNature for guidance through today's climate uncertainty Robin Wall Kimmerer joins us to explore cultural biomimicry and the beautiful braiding of western science with traditional ecological knowledge.

Tune in to Episode 2 of the AskNature Podcast to discover how shifting our narrative from exploitation to reciprocity can lead us toward true collective healing

Listen on all major streaming platforms: https://tr.ee/8g5oicJVkV

If we asked nature what to do, what would it tell us?

"I think nature would say, 'come home.'" – Janine Benyus

Episode 1 of the AskNature Podcast is live today. Janine Benyus and Christiana Figueres explore what it looks like to truly listen to the natural world, and why that act of listening might be the most transformative thing we can do right now.

🎧 Stream now on all major streaming platforms.
🔗 https://tr.ee/8g5oicJVkV

When did you last feel like you belonged to a place?

Not lived in it. Belonged to it. Knew the names of the trees, the patterns of the weather, the stories the land has been telling long before any of us arrived.

For most of human history, that kind of knowing was ordinary. Now it’s something we
have to find our way back to.

The AskNature Podcast, from the Biomimicry Institute, is a season of conversations
about that finding. About reconnection with nature as a practice, a posture, and maybe the most important work of our time.

Trailer out now. Episode 1 premiers May 27.

Listen across all the major podcast platforms: https://tr.ee/8g5oicJVkV