The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of the world’s CO2 emissions. In the tiny country of Denmark alone, 677 tonnes of textiles get destroyed every year. Our overuse of clothes puts enormous pressure on nature. Today, 60% of microplastics in the seas and oceans come from textiles.
Extending the lifespan of our clothes and buying less, better clothes is one of the biggest differences we as consumers can make to reduce the climate and environmental footprint of the shirts, the jeans, and the shoes we wear.

The Danish company Novozymes is a world-leading supplier of enzymes – a biosolution that helps solve the problem of extending the lifespan of our wardrobes.

Enzymes are proteins found everywhere in nature and in all living beings. When one substance needs to be transformed into another, nature uses enzymes to speed up and control the process.

Novozymes has developed enzymes that help speed up the efficiency of the detergents we use to wash our clothes – removing stains, smell, and damaged fibres. Used for decades in households all over the world, the enzymes in our washing detergents also enables us to wash our clothes clean at lower temperatures.

This means that less energy is used and thereby greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

The use of natural enzymes in laundry detergents helps our clothes look, smell, and feel new for longer – with less use of chemicals.

Without enzymes in detergents, laundry washing in the EU would require 12 million MWh more electricity per year for washing at higher temperatures, emit 3.3 million tons of CO2 more per year, and require 220,000 tons of additional chemicals per year.

Additionally, the lifetime of clothes would on average decline by 10% in the EU without enzymes, either due to stains, textile damage, or dinginess and dullness of colours and whites.

If this is taken into consideration, the presence of enzymes is estimated to save an additional 22 million tons of CO2 and 4,300 million m3 of water in the EU every year.