Shrinking the carbon footprint of yoga pants

Several biobased chemical makers plan to scale up production of nylon precursors made via fermentation. They are responding to demand from consumer product companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from yoga pants, athletic clothes, and other plastic products. The clothing company Lululemon says it will work with the start-up ZymoChem to scale up a fermentation process for adipic acid, a precursor of nylon 6,6. The deal follows a 2021 announcement that the clothing company was partnering with Genomatica, which has technology to produce fermentation-derived hexamethylenediamine (HMD), the other precursor of nylon 6,6. Genomatica has also been working with the nylon maker Aquafil to demonstrate technology that ferments sugar into caprolactam, which is polymerized to make nylon 6. Lululemon calls nylon a foundational material for its yoga pants and in its most recent impact report notes that nylon accounts for more than 30% of the material it uses. And