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Bob Crebas still introduces himself as "an old hippy". But these
days it's not recycled washing machines and bric-a-brac that the
Dutchman trades in. He has swapped all this for fashion collections
made from stinging nettles, designed and produced by his fast-growing
business Brennels.nl.
Four years ago, Crebas and his business
partner were selling second-hand wares through a trading website called
Marktplaats.nl when they were approached by eBay, the hugely successful
auction website, and made the kind of offer you can't refuse. The
American firm bought out Marktplaats.nl for €225m (£170m), instantly
pushing Crebas and his partner halfway up the list of Holland's 500
richest people. But Crebas had no interest in upgrading his home or
car: "Suddenly, I was in a position to put my money where my mouth is
and make real my vision of doing something that would have a positive
impact on the environment."
So, once the family celebration with
pizza and beer was over, Crebas and his wife, Carla, started
researching what practices were the most damaging to the environment.
They found that the cultivation of the enormous quantities of cotton
used by the fashion industry - much loved because it appears to be
"pure and natural" - is responsible for 25% of all insecticides and 11%
of pesticides used globally, causing massive pollution and the deaths
of thousands of people who cultivate the crops without protection. Nor
is growing enough organic cotton to satisfy the demands of the clothing
industry a viable alternative, says Crebas; it cannot be done in enough
quantity on the land available - and if more land is made available it
leads to logging and the use of agricultural land.
As he mulled
over this dilemma, he learned that stinging nettles had been used in
medieval times and more recently in both world wars, when other crops
were scarce, to make clothing, but had since long fallen out of favour.
Further investigation led him to discover that research was already
under way into the use of nettles for textiles. For example, the
Sustainable Technology in Nettle Growing (Sting) project funded by
Defra at Leicester's De Montfort University - which is now doing some
work for Crebas - has succeeded in extracting a silky thread that is
stronger and finer than from other plants such as hemp. Also, an
EU-funded project (known as FAIR-CT98-9615) has been working with
textile companies in Austria, Germany and Italy to evolve methods of
extracting fibre from nettles, as well as the spinning, weaving and
manufacturing of such textiles.
"I just wanted to demonstrate
that nettles can be a viable alternative to cotton and other textiles
that are harmful to the environment," says Crebas. In 2006, working
with one of his sons, Frank, he planted 33 hectares of the common
stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) on the land where they live and work in
Emmelord, in Holland's north-east Polder region. Today, this has grown
to 80 hectares. They also have five hectares of nettles growing in both
the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
The day I visited, father and
son were strutting the winter-hardened soil where the nettles were
beginning their growth towards a height ready for harvesting. This
would be followed by the tricky process of drying them before tying
them into bales ready to be sent for processing into a textile.
"It's not all been simple," says Crebas. "There's a lot of lime in our soil and weeds grew between the nettles we were using.
Nor
do the plants always drain well enough. And there was a lot of making
fun of us by neighbours who spend their time getting rid of stinging
nettles." But he has found a company in Germany that has cultivated a
particularly hardy high-fibre nettle clone, which is also being grown
experimentally on sites in Leicestershire and Cornwall. Crebas now
imports these to grow himself.
Ellen Atema, who oversees the
technical work for Brennels, explains that the thread, which is later
spun and woven, is extracted from nettle stems that are crushed or
broken. The process is still in its infancy and Brennels is trying to
develop a machine to strip out the delicate threads without damaging
them. It is also investigating dyeing and rinsing methods that avoid
having to pollute water.
"The next step was creating our own
fashion range," says Crebas. "This was something I knew nothing about,
but Carla was running a clothes business and knew designers." They
employed award-winning designer Rianne de Witte, known for her interest
in sustainable fabrics - "clean chique", as the company call it - to
create a collection of easy-to-wear classic styles. These can be seen
on the website (www.brennels.nl)
and at the shop it has opened in Arnhem. At present, nettle thread is
mixed with bamboo and some organic cotton because they cannot yet grow
enough pure nettle, but that is their goal.
"I see nettles as a
crop that can transform life for those growing textile crops in the
developing world," says Crebas. "Nettles grow on the most inhospitable
land, ground that has been overused with chemicals, but their
cultivation uses a very small amount - if any - of pesticide. And
because the processes for making it into a really attractive fabric are
developing all the time, there's no reason why it shouldn't be a
viable, and far more environmentally sustainable, alternative to
conventional cotton."
Crebas does not expect to make a profit for
some years, but is content with that. "I am happy living the same life
I did as a hippy. Any money we make is for the Brennels project." Then
he laughs. "But you never know, I could have hit on the biggest new
idea and be rich all over again in the future."
Angela Neustatter
Guardian
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