The Challenge

The textile industry is one of the most resource-intensive sectors globally, contributing to environmental degradation and labour rights violations across its supply chain (Brown and Börkey, 2024; Keßler, Matlin and Kümmerer, 2021). Within the EU, textile consumption ranks as the fifth largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the fourth largest in raw materials use from a global life-cycle perspective (European Commission, 2020), placing it among the highest-impact product categories assessed  (Long, Lee-Simion and Connock, 2022).

This impact is a function of scale. Global fibre production reached a record 124 million tonnes in 2023, more than double the volume produced in 2000, and is projected to reach 160 million tonnes by 2030 on current trends (Textile Exchange, 2024). Synthetic fibres, now the dominant feedstock, carry a disproportionate emissions burden due to their fossil origin and energy-intensive production (Duhoux et al., 2025). Natural fibres present a related constraint: cotton alone is cultivated on 2.5% of the world's arable land (FAO, 2023), and producing a single cotton t-shirt requires 2,700 litres of fresh water (EU Parliament, 2025).

Regardless of feedstock, the raw materials stage carries the heaviest footprint: land conversion, deforestation, chemical use and irrigation energy make fibre production one of the most environmentally significant points in the value chain (OECD, 2022), and manufacturing alone involves more than 15,000 different chemicals (Niinimäki et al., 2020). Processing compounds this further, with dyeing accounting for roughly 20% of global industrial water pollution (EU Parliament, 2025).

Global manmade cellulosic fibre (MMCF) production rose from 7.4 million tonnes in 2022 to 7.9 million tonnes in 2023 (Textile Exchange, 2024). These pressures culminate at the point of consumption, EU textile use generated 355 kg of CO₂ per capita in 2022 (EU Parliament, 2025), underscoring that any credible circular solution must intervene furthest upstream, at fibre production itself.

A Circular Solution

Founded in 2021, Rubi Laboratories addresses the raw-materials bottleneck identified above by removing agricultural cultivation from fibre production altogether. Rather than growing and pulping trees or plants for cellulose, Rubi's process begins with flue gas, the CO₂ -laden waste stream from manufacturing facilities. This gas is diverted into a bioreactor system before it can reach the atmosphere, where cell-free enzymes convert the captured CO₂ directly into pure cellulose pulp, driving the same chemical transformation plants use to build cellulose, only without cultivating a single plant. Rubi calls this "symbiotic manufacturing", a cyclical rather than linear process, built on capturing existing waste streams rather than extracting new resources (Rubi Laboratories, n.d.a.).

Crucially, the resulting cellulose is chemically the same material used in viscose and lyocell, so it doesn't require textile manufacturers to change their equipment, it can be dissolved, extruded into fibre, spun into yarn, and woven or knitted through the industry's existing production lines (Rubi Laboratories, n.d.a.).

This directly answers the land- and water-intensity problem raised, with the company reporting virtually zero water and zero land use compared with cultivated fibres (Rubi Laboratories, n.d.b.). At end of life, the pure cellulosic textile is fully biodegradable, returning captured carbon to the natural cycle rather than persisting as waste.

Rubi also describes its production units as modular and deployable at or near existing manufacturing sites rather than requiring large, centralised, land-intensive facilities (World Economic Forum, n.d.).

Environmental, Social and Economic Impact

Each garment made with Rubi's cellulose is estimated by the company to avoid and capture the equivalent of around 20 bathtubs of CO₂ per pair of jeans, roughly 18 avoided and 2 directly captured from industrial flue gas, alongside virtually zero water and zero land use compared with cultivated fibres, and full biodegradability at end of life (Rubi Laboratories, n.d.b.). The technology offers a renewable, forest-free alternative to wood pulp. According to Rubi's NSF Phase II award abstract, at pilot scale and measured against wood-pulp cellulose, their technology delivers around 50% lower CO₂e emissions, 60% less water use and 98% less land use (America’s Seed Fund by NSF, n.d.).

Conventional cellulose and cotton processing exposes workers to heavy agrochemical and industrial chemical use, links to respiratory illness and other health effects (Niinimäki et al., 2020); replacing field cultivation and chemical pulping with enzymatic conversion would, by removing those inputs, plausibly reduce this category of occupational exposure.  Beyond the factory floor, the platform is expected to generate new employment and strengthen domestic manufacturing capacity, tapping into a serviceable obtainable market estimated at $2 billion in the United States (America’s Seed Fund by NSF, n.d.). [PW1] 

Economically, the technology has drawn both public and private validation. Rubi was awarded a $969,961 Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to scale its carbon-to-cellulose platform, following a completed Phase I award (America’s Seed Fund by NSF, n.d.). It was also named to Forbes' Under 30 list for Manufacturing & Industry, with reporting noting $4.5 million raised and pilot agreements underway with clothing brands (Feldman, Ohnsman and Brier, 2022). Commercially, cell-free enzymatic conversion is reported to cut energy and capital costs by up to a factor of ten, moving cellulose toward cost parity with conventional fibres and drawing engagement from Walmart, H&M, Patagonia and Stella McCartney (World Economic Forum, n.d.).

Replicability

Rubi is not alone in treating carbon emissions as a feedstock rather than a waste. A handful of companies are converting captured or waste carbon into usable materials, by different routes:

• Fairbrics (France) - has built a chemical process, pairing catalysis with electrochemistry, that captures CO₂ from industrial sources and turns it into the organic building blocks used in plastics manufacturing. Its first commercial application replaces fossil-derived inputs in polyester production with this captured carbon, and the company is working toward a version of the material that is fully carbon-negative.

  
  

• LanzaTech (USA) - captures waste industrial gases and converts them into usable raw materials through a recycling process. One commercial result of this is CO2Renu, a fleece line developed with outdoor brand Craghoppers that is built from carbon LanzaTech has diverted from industrial emissions rather than drawn from virgin fossil sources.

  
  

• Newlight (USA) - operates Eagle 3, the world's first fully integrated commercial-scale production system converting air and greenhouse gas into a biomaterial called AirCarbon. Using naturally occurring microorganisms discovered in California that convert air and dissolved greenhouse gas into PHB, the technology produces decarbonised, compostable materials now used in foodware and packaging.