The fashion industry has long been a larger contributor to the growing amount of waste that fills our landfills. With the rise of fast fashion, textile waste has become a concern that is too large to ignore for many.
To address that concern, startup company Smartex has developed an AI textile defect detection system that aims to make needless textile waste a thing of the past. The company offers a wide range of solutions that focus on digitizing the textile industry, improving efficiency, and helping companies promote sustainability.
As reported by CNBC, Smartex and its proprietary technology have captured the attention of many high-profile investors, including H&M and Amazon, which awarded the company with its AWS Compute for Climate Fellowship. The program funds projects that "leverage advanced cloud computing, including generative AI and high performance computing, to solve some of the biggest challenges in the fight against climate change."
According to Smartex co-founder Gilberto Loureiro, the idea behind Smartex was influenced by the textile industry that he essentially grew up in. Loureiro worked in a textile factory as a teenager in Portugal.
"I really love the textile industry and problem solving … but I hate this inspection working and inefficiencies and the waste," Loureiro admitted. "It's really one of the most difficult jobs in the world."
After earning his master's degree in physics, Loureiro and his partners founded Smartex in 2018. Since then, the company claims that it has prevented the waste of one million kilograms (about 2.2 million pounds) of fabric thanks to production defects.
"Without intervention, this defect will continue, leading to the waste of yarn & energy," Smartex wrote. "This not only adds to the environmental burden but also undermines the efficiency, productivity, & profitability of the entire production chain."
As noted by a report from Earth.org, 92 million tons of textile waste are produced around the globe every year. This has led to an increase in harmful air pollution, microplastic pollution, and resource depletion. Discarded textiles often end up in landfills, where they decompose slowly, releasing methane gas and leaching harmful chemicals into the soil and groundwater.
"If this is the largest industry that is still untouched by [the] internet and is one of the largest pollutants in the world, and nobody is working on this in terms of technology, there is a massive gap here," Loureiro said.
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