As customers increasingly demand more sustainable products, retail businesses are exploring and using more environmentally friendly materials in their supply chains. Sheet Society, a bedding brand, is set to launch a new line of pillows and quilts made from a proprietary material fashioned out of cornstarch, rather than duck down, in order to provide customers with a biodegradable, hyper-allergenic and vegan alternative to traditional bedding.

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The new ‘Cloud Corn’ bedding range was developed alongside Sheet Society’s 100 per cent recycled down quilts and pillows, which launched earlier this year. Hayley Worley, Sheet Society’s founder and chief executive, told Inside Retail that “down is obviously a really premium fibre, and so giving our customers a more affordable, but still sustainable, option was important to us.”

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The team at Sheet Society spent several years researching different fibre alternatives in an effort to avoid polyester – a common material that is particularly damaging to the environment because it’s derived from fossil fuels – and eventually settled on processing corn into a fibre. To make the material, corn starch is first fermented into a sugar, then converted into a biopolymer and spun into a fibre that is fully plant-based and compostable.

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Sources: https://insideretail.com.au/business/sustainability/corn-to-pillows-fruit-to-blazers-brands-get-creative-in-quest-to-go-green-202308