Post Carbon Lab
Post Carbon Lab, founded by Dian-Jen Lin and Hannes Hulstaert, is a transdisciplinary design research studio focusing on sustainability and dignity.
We offer service pilots of two microbiological processes for textile applications – Bacterial Pigment Dyeing & Photosynthesis Coating – to designers and brands in the fashion, textile, interior, product and automotive industries. Bacterial Pigment Dyeing employs soil-dwelling bacteria that naturally produce pigments to dye textiles and garments. Photosynthesis Coating is a living photosynthetic layer that can be applied to various textiles, garments and products to allow photosynthesis at the surface level during user phase.
We are keen to be part of the Future Fashion Factory network and access to UK-based fashion, textile and manufacturing businesses with whom we can potentially collaborate in the future. Our strength lies in bio-dyes, bio-finishes and biomanufacturing as we believe that these will be the necessary next steps for the fashion industry to become more circular and sustainable.
- Listing ID: 1422
- Contact: Dian-Jen Lin and Hannes Hulstaert
- What are your aspirations and plans for the future?: We are currently piloting our sustainable and regenerative microbiological processes for textile application with multiple designers, brands, interested individuals and students. We work on a collaboration basis: we offer pioneering sustainable innovations to any interested party or individual at cost price while our collaborators contribute user-end maintenance data and qualitative feedback to improve our research & development. We aim to collaborate with multiple partners from different market segments to test the performance and commercial feasibility in various contexts and use cases. Since we operate in a niche field and such technologies are still unknown to most fashion professionals, we are building a community to spread the awareness of our piloting services. At the same time, we lower the threshold of accessing innovations by opening the door of research and laboratory to anyone at cost price. Our next steps are focused on two parts: conducting standardised testing to quantify the performance of our processes and scaling up our bio-manufacturing systems. We are hoping to collaborate with textile labs in the UK and measure the limitations of our current technology and refine them to cater to the market. Working with influential industry partners is also in our plan and we have been in conversation with a few of the fashion brands who are interested in trialling our technologies. We hope to do a limited capsule collaboration with them this year.
- What types of projects are you interested in working on through Future Fashion Factory?: Apart from the future steps mentioned above, we hope to work with other members in the Future Fashion Factory network and collaborate with them to understand the scope and interest from other businesses while collecting more user-end data from our collaborators. We also want to build a resilient local supply chain in the UK to instil our ethos of sustainability and dignity while bringing in innovative perspectives and ecological solutions. Even though we are currently based in London, we are keen to explore the mills in the Yorkshire region and the rich textile heritage they have.
