but I always fell in love with nature.

I am Marc Palahi, the director of  the European Forest Institute.

I am originally from Barcelona. Now living in the middle of the  

forest here in Finland. Our forests are hosting 80%  

of all the biodiversity globally. They are our largest terrestrial carbon sink.  

And the good news is that with  the emerging technologies,  

we can transform that wood into a totally new  range of innovative bio-based solutions.  

Fashion is an incredible sector. It's a $3 trillion business.  

The fashion industry is responsible for around  5% of the global greenhouse emissions.  

So it's also responsible for 20%  of the global wastewater.  

And the fact that we are using  oil-based materials like polyester  

also generates a big problem of  microplastics in our oceans.  

The change that we need to  put forward is massive  

if you consider that we are producing roughly  100 million tons of textile fibres today.  

Wood is the only significant alternative  for the textile sector.  

We can transform wood into a new generation  of sustainable bio-based textile fibres,  

The tree does the same thing as the cotton  plant. It actually produces cellulose.  

In the case of wood, what you do, is you  need to get it somehow out of the tree,  

you need to dissolve it. It's  very comparable to the paper  

industry.  

You dissolve the cellulose and then  it looks, in the end, like honey.  

And then you blow air onto it and then  the molecules start to arrange,  

and suddenly you get a very beautiful fibre. There has been a lot of  

investment in innovation, to make wood based textiles sustainable.  

This means using circular systems, where  the chemicals are 99% circulated.  

There is Lyocell, Ioncell and maybe  you have heard about Tencell,  

which is the way that Lenzing commercialised. But there are many other now technologies.  

And there is even now a Finnish startup  called Spinnova, which does not use even  

chemicals at all. To buy a sustainable piece of garment,  

the difference between an  environmentally acceptable choice  

and an unacceptable choice is  as small as 20 - 30 cents.  

I know that H&M is very interested in moving  towards sustainable wood-based textiles.  

I know that Nike also is trying to  promote recycling to produce their  

own footwear products. So I think the movement is  

taking place from many different brands

and using different sustainability strategies, but  I think all converging into the same point  

that we need sustainable materials and we need  sustainable processes.  

Patagonia, Stella McCartney, they were indeed  trailblazers who I think made the theme  

more acceptable for more High  Street, you know, normal fashion  

brands. NGOs started to work on  

the brands. Consumers started to wake up.

Consumers put, you know, pressure  on the total value chain.  

Consumers put pressure on governments.  Governments wake up to the challenge.  

We get an EU Green Deal, and things  just start to fall into place.  

And I think whether we want it or not,  the whole industry will follow.  

We really need to connect both  technology and nature.  

I think this will be the  secret of the 21st century,  

connecting technology and nature to really rethink our economy.  

And I think now the secret in the  coming decades is to recognise  

that the true purpose, and the true  engine of our economy is nature.