Hugo Boss and H&M. What do these have in common? They’re both big players in the fashion industry working to be more sustainable. And thanks to Ananas Anam they're well on their way. The company's product Piñatex is an innovative, eco-friendly and cruelty-free textile made from pineapple fibres.

Right now, the fashion industry ranks as one of the biggest polluters globally, producing 10% of all humanity's CO2 emissions. Our culture of producing fast, cheap clothes is not only damaging our ecosystems but is soaking up vast amounts of our natural resources. The world desperately needs more sustainable solutions.

Cue, Piñatex. In the Philippines, a major pineapple producer, the pineapple leaves are generally discarded during the harvest. But now they're being repurposed to make Piñatex. The extracted fibres from the leaves go through an industrial process that turns them into a 'non-woven mesh', which serves as the base of Piñatex. The finished fabric is soft, flexible and very durable, and can be coloured with almost any plant-based dyes.

In addition to making use of a by-product, Piñatex's production method uses minimal water and creates very little production waste. This cradle-to-cradle production has proven to be scalable, providing jobs and improving livelihoods in emerging economies like the Philippines, while delivering sustainable textiles to some of the world's biggest fashion brands.

Piñatex has already collaborated with multiple renowned brands to produce climate-aware collections. In 2019 alone, they launched trainers with Hugo Boss and their collaboration with H&M, the Conscious Exclusive Collection, sold out in less than 48 hours.

In addition to fashion, Piñatex is looking to venture into furniture and automobile solutions. They also plan to further research on how to make their product bio-degradable for a completely circular economy.