Given that bananas are one of the world’s most wasteful crops, and that Uganda is the world’s leading producer of bananas, second only to India, a Uganda startup is making a big contribution to solving that by turning banana waste into textiles.

When farmers lop off bananas from the trees, they generally leave the bulky, bulbous trunks to decompose and waste away. TexFad is extracting the fibres from parts of the trunks that farmers usually burn or throw away.

“When I looked around I saw that bananas grow abundantly in this country … we generate a lot of waste from the banana gardens,” said Kimani Muturi, TexFad’s managing director and founder. “Banana fibre is the fibre of the future,” he says. He reckons the light, organic material could replace some synthetic fibres and be used to make paper products like bank notes among a range of possible applications.