This Startup Promised to Help Fashion Go Green. Brands Didn’t Want to Pay for It.

When a Swedish startup launched a new material made from recycled textiles in late 2022, the fashion industry hailed it as a game changer in its efforts to lessen its environmental impact.

Last month, the company, Renewcell, filed for bankruptcy. While some big retailers, including H&M and Zara, were enthusiastic backers, not enough brands committed to buying its material. Having misjudged how quickly the fashion industry would switch to more sustainable sourcing, the company was left with a costly factory running far below capacity.

The plight of Renewcell illustrates the fashion industry’s hesitancy in adopting new materials that may be better for the environment but typically cost more, at least in the short term. It is also another sign of how some companies are putting less emphasis on green initiatives amid a more challenging economic climate.

“There’s a disconnect” between some companies’ stated sustainability ambitions and what they actually do, said Tricia Carey , Renewcell’s chief commercial officer. “Fashion brands have the intention,” Carey said, “but many are lacking the road map to make it happen.”

Making clothes uses a large and growing amount of the planet’s resources. More than 100 billion garments are produced annually and that number is set to rise by one-third by 2030, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a nonprofit. It says the average garment is worn only 10 times before being discarded, often ending up in the trash . The fashion industry is responsible for as much as 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion.

Fashion brands have come under growing pressure from consumers and regulators to reduce their environmental impact, posing a dilemma for an industry hardwired to keep increasing sales by churning out more clothes.

To burnish their green credentials, brands have encouraged consumers to repair, recycle or sell old clothes rather than throw them away. They have also invested in so-called next-generation materials that promise to use fewer resources and, in some cases, have the potential to be recycled again and again.

Inditex , the parent company of Zara, says it wants a quarter of the fiber it uses to be made from next-generation materials by 2030. To foster new materials, the company has worked with more than 300 startups, also including Renewcell, through a Sustainability Innovation Hub that it set up four years ago.

H&M says it wants recycled fibers to constitute half of the material it uses by 2030. The company has invested in more than 25 sustainability startups, including Renewcell.

So far, the uptake of greener material has been sluggish. Recycled materials made up 7.9% of global fibre production in 2022, down from 8.5% the year before, according to the Textile Exchange, a nonprofit that advocates the adoption of more environmentally friendly materials. Much of that came from recycled plastic bottles, with less than 1% of all fibre coming from recycled textiles.

That’s despite next-generation materials attracting more than $3 billion of investment over the past decade, according to the Material Innovation Initiative, with dozens of new-textile companies launched during that time.

Founded in 2012, Renewcell became the first chemical textile-to-textile recycler to start producing material on a commercial scale.

Its material is called Circulose, which is produced by treating old textiles with chemicals to create a cellulose pulp. This is dried into sheets, which fibre producers can then dissolve to produce viscose and other materials that are used to make clothes. Unlike mechanically recycled fibres, which fray and ultimately disintegrate, Renewcell’s chemical process breaks old textiles down to the level of individual molecules from which strong, new fibres are made. These can be recycled indefinitely via the same process.

With many fashion companies pledging to invest in new textiles to be more sustainable, Renewcell bet on strong demand for its material.

The company raised $158 million, mostly through a 2020 listing in Stockholm, and invested $125 million to convert an old paper mill in eastern Sweden into a Circulose factory capable of producing 60,000 metric tons a year.

Renewcell also outlined plans for two additional factories that would increase its output sixfold by 2030.

Besides Inditex and H&M, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger owner PVH committed to buying significant quantities of fiber made from Circulose.

But Renewcell hit a brick wall in talks with other big brands. In meetings, brand executives would often express excitement and agree to pilot projects, only to balk at placing commercial-scale orders, said Carey.

Jolts to the economy, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and shaky consumer confidence had made brands risk averse.

Would-be customers fixated on how fiber made from Circulose cost 20% to 45% more than the virgin fibers they typically bought, as well as uncertainty about integrating a new material into their supply chains, Carey said. Fiber typically accounts for about 5% of the retail price of a finished garment.

Renewcell needed its factory to reach full output quickly to become commercially viable, but it achieved only 30% capacity last year as anticipated orders failed to materialize.

By October, the company was running out of cash, and in January it laid off a quarter of its 130 staff. It filed for bankruptcy in February after failing to secure fresh investment.

Renewcell is now seeking a buyer to repay its debts and restart production.

The company’s predicament is a grim sign for a clothing industry that claims to want to transform itself, said Claire Bergkamp, managing director of the Textile Exchange.

“My hope is this will be a wake-up call for the industry,” she said.

Unless fashion companies commit to paying higher prices for new, greener materials, other fiber startups could also struggle, Bergkamp added.

While the transition from gasoline cars to electric vehicles has benefited from billions of dollars in subsidies, the move to new textiles has received practically no government support, making startups reliant on private funding.

That has left some big clothing companies, notably H&M and Inditex, shouldering a relatively large share of the burden of supporting new-material startups.

H&M invested in Renewcell in 2017 and was the first retailer to launch products containing Circulose. It currently sells around three dozen products containing the material.

The retailer wanted to invest more but decided not to commit more cash in recent weeks because of the lack of support from other companies, said H&M Chief Executive Daniel Ervér .

Earlier this month, H&M announced a new investment in Syre, a startup developing a polyester-fabric recycling process, and pledged to buy $600 million worth of its material over seven years—assuming it achieves commercial production.

Demand for recycled polyester is already established, with material made from recycled bottles already commonly used to make clothes. But textile-to-textile recycled polyester is similar to Circulose in that the technology is untested at scale.

To drive a shift to next-generation materials, other companies need to invest and commit to buying new textiles at scale, Ervér said.

“H&M alone cannot provide the scale that is required,” Ervér said. “The industry needs to commit.”

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

This Startup Promised to Help Fashion Go Green. Brands Didn’t Want to Pay for It.

Many clothing brands say environmentally friendly materials are key to their future, but uptake has been sluggish

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.