You might think that wearing a top made from wood pulp would give instant eco-credentials – it is renewable, biodegradable, and, having once been a tree, it has soaked up some carbon along the way. What’s more, it’s not plastic. This is why many brands are opting for viscose, Lycocell, acetate and modal – soft, silky, semi-synthetic fabrics made from tree-pulp – as an apparently more sustainable option.

Except that the chances are that your wood-pulp top may not be so green. “Deforestation continues to be a problem,” says Nicole Rycroft, who founded Canopy, a Vancouver-based NGO, 25 years ago to help protect ancient and endangered forests. The NGO’s initiative CanopyStyle focuses on fashion. “It’s 2024 – surely we are smarter than mowing down 1,000-year-old trees to make T-shirts.”

In total, about 300m trees are logged globally each year to make viscose, sustainably or otherwise. These fabrics go by the rather geeky term, “man-made cellulosic fibres”, or MMCFs. Demand for viscose, the third most used fabric in fashion (after polyester and cotton), is expected to double over the next eight years.

Rycroft remains optimistic, however. “In the last seven years, more than half of global viscose producers have shifted away from high-risk forest-sourcing towards FSC-certified forest fibre and low-carbon next-gen alternatives. Historically we’ve seen dramatic shifts – for example, with the recycled paper industry, which brought on 70m tonnes of capacity within a decade. That’s the pace of transition we need to see in fashion.”

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Has your favourite brand committed to sourcing viscose without plundering ancient and endangered forests? All of CanopyStyle’s 550 fashion members are held to this standard, as well as to increasing their use of MMCFs made with recycled fibres.

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