In addition to €200,000 each in financial support, the winners gain access to a powerful network of mentors, collaborators and industry leaders to help bring their solutions to life.
“This year’s winners are not just solving problems; they’re rethinking the systems behind them,” said Annie Lindmark, Programme Director at the H&M Foundation. “Their ideas reflect the kind of early-stage innovation we need to unlock system-level change, and remind us that transformation starts with brave, often uncertain steps.”
Brilliant Dyes: Sustainable Algae-Based Natural Dyes
Brilliant Dyes, a spinout under formation at Imperial, won its award for natural dyes it is developing from algae. This involves an innovative low-energy extraction process that will make them a more sustainable option than synthetic dyes.
- The dyes are carbon-negative, capturing CO₂ as they grow.
- They eliminate the need for sugar or fossil feedstocks.
- The process is more affordable and accessible than other natural dye alternatives.
- The closed-loop extraction means no solvent waste.
- Algae residue can be used as fertiliser, biofuel, and animal feed.
“Growing up in Dhaka, I saw first-hand how synthetic dyes turned our rivers toxic and made the air nearly unbreathable,” said Mohammad Redwanur Rahman, a PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering and one of the inventors of the technology.
That experience shaped everything,” he went on. “Our algae-based dyes offer a carbon-negative alternative. They capture CO₂ as they grow and eliminate the need for sugar or fossil feedstocks. It’s a way to clean up one of the dirtiest parts of fashion, using something as simple and powerful as algae.”
This approach has the potential to cut the carbon footprint of synthetic indigo dye sector by around 50%, with the added benefit that the resulting dyes are non-toxic and biodegradable.
Industrial Collaboration and Development for Brilliant Dyes
Mr. Redwanur Rahman is in the process of setting up Brilliant Dyes together with co-founders Dr Md Tabish Noori, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Professor Klaus Hellgardt, who is supervising his PhD.
The team is working on:
- Strengthening industrial and academic collaborations.
- Researching the colourfastness of the dyes.
- Using computational modelling for commercialisation.
- Securing funding for pilot-scale dye extraction.
- Expanding the team to explore high-end textile applications.
“Winning the Global Change Award is a huge validation of our mission to replace toxic synthetic dyes with a cleaner, scalable alternative,” said Dr Noori. “With the H&M Foundation’s support, we can strengthen our core business understanding of fashion industries, build industry collaborations and fast-track consumer validation, bringing us closer to delivering affordable, sustainable dyes to the global textile supply chain."
“Brilliant Dyes is a great example of a dozen new, exciting spinouts in the pipeline of ChemEng Enterprise, the highly successful decentralised enterprise support programme in the Department of Chemical Engineering,” said Professor Sandro Macchietto, the department’s Director of Enterprise.
PulpaTronics: Innovative All-Paper RFID Tags for Retail
PulpaTronics’ innovation targets the retail section of the fashion industry. It has devised an all-paper radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag that is:
- Cheaper to produce than plastic, paper, and metal composite tags.
- Fully recyclable in regular recycling bins after use.
The idea came to co-founders Chloe So and Barna Soma Biro during a group project for the Master’s programme in Innovation Design Engineering, run jointly by Imperial and the Royal College of Art.
The startup has won the Creative and Consumer track prize at the 2023 Venture Catalyst Challenge and has participated in The Greenhouse, Undaunted’s climate accelerator.
In addition, the company has raised £430,000 in pre-seed funding to accelerate product development and launched pilot studies with retail and packaging companies, including a pilot with low-cost airline Vueling.
“Winning this award will allow us to automate more of our production manufacturing, as well as accelerate our R&D around alternative substrates like bioplastics,” says Ms So.
It will also raise awareness of the RFID tag e-waste challenge and help convince more retail brands that change is urgent.
“The staggering volume of unnecessary e-waste generated by these RFID tags is an urgent crisis that can’t be ignored,” she says. “Having the support from the H&M Foundation to accelerate our R&D towards commercialisation shows that the fashion industry is ready to stand with us to lead the charge toward meaningful change.”
Changemakers Driving System-Level Fashion Innovation
The H&M Global Change Awards support bold, early-stage innovations that can decarbonise fashion and drive industry-wide transformation. Past Imperial winners include:
- DyeRecycle, a startup cutting water use and pollution through dye recycling.
- Algreen, which developed biobased polyurethane from sustainable algae.
This year’s competition attracted 476 ideas from 69 countries across six continents, narrowed down to 20 finalists. Brilliant Dyes and PulpaTronics were among the Imperial-connected finalists.
Other Imperial-linked finalists included:
- Tera Mira, working on a seaweed-based alternative to elastane.
- Sequinova, developing biodegradable plastic sequin replacements.
All featured companies are alumni of The Greenhouse accelerator. Brilliant Dyes recently joined The Greenhouse’s eighth cohort.
“This recognition reinforces the strength of our ecosystem in backing pioneering science, scalable solutions, and visionary founders driving real change in one of the world’s most resource-intensive sectors,” said Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Undaunted.
“We can’t wait to see these startups evolve with the invaluable recognition and financial support that the awards provide. We also hope to see barriers to adoption decrease at pace for these game-changing innovations, so vital to our future on this planet.”
