Sustainable textile innovations: Shrimp fabric is diverse, sustainable and has already been spotted on the catwalk

Nicole Sved, engineer at TômTex, was interviewed in FashionUnited for their sustainable textile utilizing shrimp chitin.

TômTex's new type of textile is not made from shrimp meat, but from the complex type of sugar in the shell: chitin. “You can find it everywhere in nature,” assures Sved. She describes the building material as a white, sandy, odorless powder. “We now mainly extract it from shrimp shells because that is a major waste stream from the shellfish industry, but it is in everything, including mushrooms, coffee and insects.”