FashionLab #4
biodegrad-
ability
lailuoto
turku archipelago
Biodegradability is the capacity for biological degradation of organic materials by living organisms down to the base substances such as water, carbon dioxide, methane, basic elements and biomass.
Using jeans which included Re-Gen from Candiani Denim Mills, Rebirth from Bossa Denim Mills and DryIndigo from Tejidos Royo Millshe, the Veerkracht team explored the differences in biodegradability in a northern climate that is vastly different from that in the more temperate equatorial zones of the earth experienced in the other biospheric treatments within the FashionLab series.
A range of biospheric experiments were carried out to monitor the activity of Finland’s natural soil enzymes and microbes in Finland.
To maintain a consistency in the treatments the biodegradability testing periods for all the jeans buried in soil was the same, i.e. twelve weeks.
The island conditions experienced at the Lailuoto,Turku Archipelago resulted in the least deterioration. The specimen denim was successfully decomposing but at a slightly slower pace than results in the other testing regions.
The team also left two pairs of jeans in Katiska, a traditional Finnish fishing trap, for 9 months. As expected, the brackish waters of the Baltic sea in Finland are not very rich with the microbe activity and the jeans were the least affected. Also, during the winter period, life and all activity slows down considerably under the sea ice.
This Veerkracht sustainable experimentation might not have happened without the support of
