Bananatex scores 92 out of 100 for wearer health on Toxome's fiber scale, where 100 is cleanest. It is 100 percent abacá, a fiber banana grown in the Philippines with no pesticides, no fertilizer and no irrigation, and it is one of the very few fabrics anywhere that holds Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold, which means an outside body went through its full chemical inventory instead of taking the brand's word for it. Two honest catches. It is almost always sold with a coating, either a plant wax or a fluorine-free water repellent. And on a clothing label it is usually a blend, not the whole garment. Read the percentage.
What is Bananatex?
Bananatex is a canvas woven from abacá, a banana relative grown for its fiber instead of its fruit. The fiber comes from the leaf stalks, which are stripped by hand. The Swiss bag brand QWSTION spent three years developing it with a spinning mill in Taiwan and launched it in 2018. The name does a lot of work, and it is worth knowing what it hides. Abacá is Musa textilis, a different plant from the banana you eat, and Bananatex is not made from the waste of banana farming. It is a crop, planted on purpose. That is not a knock on it. Purpose-grown abacá is why the fiber is consistent enough to weave into technical cloth. It just means the mental picture most people form from the word banana, a fruit farm sweeping up its own scraps, is not what this is.
Abacá used to be called Manila hemp, and for most of the 1800s it was the rope the world sailed on. It is one of the very few plant fibers that does not rot in salt water, so it held the rigging of ships when everything else on the boat gave out first. The Philippines built an export economy on it and still grows the large majority of the world's supply. You have almost certainly touched it without knowing: abacá paper is what teabags, coffee filters, sausage casings and some banknotes are made from, chosen because it is strong when wet and safe next to food. Bananatex is the same fiber, aimed at cloth instead of cordage.
How Bananatex is made
Grown on Philippine hillsides in mixed planting, with no pesticide, fertilizer, or irrigation.
Stalks stripped by hand with a knife to pull the long fibers out. No chemistry.
The fiber is pressed into sheets and made into paper before it is ever a yarn.
The paper is sliced into fine ribbons and twisted, an old East Asian paper-yarn technique.
Yarn-dyed before weaving, which uses less water and dye than running finished rolls.
An optional plant-based wax coating gives the cloth its dry hand and sheds water.
It starts on hillsides in the Philippines, in mixed planting rather than a monoculture field. Abacá is a tough, self-sufficient plant. It is grown with no pesticides, no fertilizer and no irrigation, which is the same claim hemp makes and one that conventional cotton cannot make at all. The plant is cut up to three times a year, and the leaves left behind are composted back into the ground.
The stalks are stripped by hand with a knife to pull the long fibers out, a step called decortication. There is no chemistry here. It is a physical process, the same category as the combing that makes clean hemp. The fiber is dried, bundled, then boiled and pressed into sheets so it can be shipped.
The sheets go to Taiwan, and this is the part that makes Bananatex unusual. The fiber is not spun the way cotton is. It is made into paper first. The paper is then sliced into fine ribbons and twisted into a yarn. That is an old East Asian paper-yarn technique, done here on modern machines, and it is what gives the cloth its dry, slightly crisp hand.
The yarn is dyed before weaving rather than after, which uses less water and less dye than running finished rolls through a bath, and the dyeing is certified to OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100. It is then woven at high density. Last comes the optional coating: a plant-based wax that makes the cloth shed water and gives it that waxed-canvas feel.
One thing changed that older articles will get wrong. Bananatex used beeswax until 2023, then swapped it for a plant-based coating and registered with The Vegan Society. Anything written before that, and anything made before that, is describing an animal product.
Is Bananatex safe to wear?
Start with what is not in it. Bananatex is cellulose from a plant, so it does not shed plastic microfibers into your lungs or your washing machine, and it carries none of the antimony, BPA or residual monomers that come with polyester, recycled polyester and nylon. It breathes, and abacá's hollow structure moves moisture instead of holding it against you.
Then the growing. Abacá needs no pesticides and no fertilizer, so the pesticide-residue question that hangs over conventional cotton does not arise. This is the same reason hemp and linen sit at the very top of this guide.
The Cradle to Cradle Gold certificate is the part worth paying attention to. Certification requires the maker to hand over a full inventory of every chemical in the product, which an accredited assessor then screens against a banned list that includes intentionally added fluorinated compounds. Gold is the second-highest of four levels. Most fibers in this guide are scored on what the process makes likely. This one has actually been checked.
Abacá is also naturally odor-resistant, and Bananatex has test results for it. That matters more than it sounds. The usual way to make a fabric odor-resistant is to load it with silver ions, which are a biocide, and Toxome penalizes antimicrobial finishes because a biocide against your skin all day is a real question mark. Here the property comes from the fiber, with nothing added, so there is nothing to penalize.
The two real risks are the same two on every fabric, and the fiber name never covers either. The coating is one. The dye is the other. Bananatex's standard dyeing is OEKO-TEX certified and its optional coating is a disclosed plant wax, which is about as good as either gets. But a brand that buys Bananatex cloth and then puts its own finish on it is a different piece of clothing, and the label is where you find out.
- No plastic to shed Plant cellulose from stalk to cloth. It does not release microfibers into water or air the way polyester and nylon do with every wash.
- Odor-resistant with nothing added Abacá resists bacteria and odor on its own, so the fabric does not need the silver-ion biocide that most odor-control clothing relies on.
- Water-resistant without fluorine The coating is a plant-based wax, not a fluorinated DWR. You get water beading off the surface without the PFAS question that follows most weatherproof fabric.
- Independently screened, not self-declared Cradle to Cradle Gold means an outside assessor reviewed the full chemical inventory. Very few fabrics of any kind have been through that.
Bananatex scores 92, one notch below hemp and linen at 94, and level with organic cotton. It does not sit at the very top for one reason: hemp and linen go from stalk to yarn by combing, while abacá is cooked and pulped into paper on the way, and the finished cloth is nearly always sold with a coating on it. Neither of those is a health problem we can point at. They are extra steps, and the score prices in extra steps. Disclose that a piece is uncoated and it earns 94, the same as linen. Two other calls worth naming. We give no penalty for the odor resistance, because it comes from the fiber rather than an added biocide. And we do not apply the usual water-resistant penalty to a Cradle to Cradle certified product, because that penalty exists to guess at hidden PFAS and certification means someone already checked. Plain abacá with no Bananatex trademark on it scores 90, not 92, the same way conventional cotton scores below organic. The trademark is what guarantees the growing conditions, the dye standard and the certificate. See the full method.
Doing this check on every product page yourself is the tedious part. The Toxome Chrome extension reads the composition for you while you shop, so you see whether something is Bananatex (and what else is in it) before you buy, not after it arrives.
How Bananatex affects the planet
Abacá is a genuinely low-input crop. It is planted into mixed agriculture and forestry rather than a cleared field, it is rain-fed, and it needs neither pesticide nor fertilizer to produce a harvest up to three times a year. The leaves left after cutting go back into the soil.
End of life is the strongest part of the case. Bananatex holds EN 13432 for industrial compostability and ISO 14851 for biodegradation in seawater, which is a test almost nothing in a wardrobe passes. That is only true of the fabric as certified, though. A brand that blends it with polyester or laminates something onto it has ended the compostable story, whatever the hang tag says.
The caveat is scale and price. Bananatex runs roughly 15 to 35 euros a meter against a few dollars for synthetic canvas, which is why it shows up in 400-dollar bags and capsule collections rather than on the high street. And the abacá reaches the mill through a reseller sitting between the spinner and several hundred small farms, which the company itself has named as the hard part of holding labor standards.
Abacá is grown without irrigation. The water cost sits in processing, not in the field.
QWSTION's own figure is that one plant offsets the production and transport of more than ten bags a year. That is a brand claim, not an independent LCA.
Certified to EN 13432 for industrial composting and ISO 14851 for biodegradation in seawater.
Plant cellulose from stalk to cloth. There is no plastic in it to shed.
Environmental figures are separate from the health score above, which reflects wearer health only. Numbers are per kilogram of finished fiber and rounded; see sources.
How to care for Bananatex
shop Bananatex
Bananatex (abacá), answered
No, and this is the most common thing people get wrong about it. Bananatex is made from abacá, Musa textilis, a banana relative grown specifically for fiber. It is a crop planted on purpose, not a byproduct swept up from fruit farming. Other fabrics sold as "banana fiber" really are made from the pseudostems left over after a fruit harvest. Those are a different material and they do not carry Bananatex's certificates.
Yes, since 2023. Before that the water-resistant coating was beeswax. The company replaced it with a plant-based coating and registered the fabric with The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark. Older stock and older articles still describe the beeswax version.
No. The coating is a plant-based wax, and the durable water repellent versions of the fabric are fluorine-free. They are covered by the same Cradle to Cradle Gold certificate as the uncoated cloth, which requires screening the full chemical inventory against a banned list that includes fluorinated compounds. This is the rare case where a water-resistant fabric can actually show you what is on it.
Water-resistant, not waterproof. The wax makes rain bead and roll off, and it holds up to a shower or a commute. It is not a sealed membrane, and it wears off over years and needs redoing. Treat claims of "waterproof" on a plastic-free fabric with suspicion, including on this one.
Two extra steps. Abacá is cooked and pulped into paper before it becomes yarn, where flax and hemp are simply combed. And the finished cloth is nearly always sold with a coating on it, where linen is not. Neither is a health problem anyone can point to, but the score reflects processing, and those are processing. An uncoated Bananatex piece scores 94.
Probably not. On clothing it is usually a blend. Fendi's denim capsule with the mill Berto is 45 percent abacá and 55 percent organic cotton, and Berto's broader range runs 36 to 45 percent. That particular blend is clean, because organic cotton is clean. A Bananatex blend carrying polyester or elastane is a different story, and the number on the label is the only way to tell.
- Material · Bananatex
- Inside Bananatex: the world's first technical fabric made from naturally grown Abacá banana plants · Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute
- World's first technical fabric made from banana fibre, Bananatex, becomes Vegan Trademark certified · The Vegan Society
- Bananatex: plastic-free technical fibres for outerwear · plasticfree.com
- Qwstion's Bananatex: a sustainable fabric for the backpack industry · WWD
- Fendi's new denim collection elevates banana fiber to luxury fashion · Sourcing Journal / WWD
- Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard, Version 4.0 · Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute
- OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 · OEKO-TEX
The health score reflects wearer health only and mirrors the Toxome app. This guide is educational and is not medical advice.