Fashion's green future of seaweed coats and mushroom shoes

The sustainability movement's strength comes from many actors pulling in the same direction.

From making algae-sequin dresses, dyeing clothes with bacteria to planting trackable pigments in cotton, an emerging tide of technological innovations offers the fashion industry a chance to clean up its woeful environmental record. Change is urgently needed, since the industry consumes 93 billion cubic metres of water per year, dumps 500,000 tonnes of plastic microfibres into the ocean, and accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The growing demands for change have generated ingenious responses, such as New York designer Charlotte McCurdy's seaweed raincoat.