From being told she would never succeed in science, Ashley has completed a degree in chemical engineering and followed an exciting career as a fashion designer. She has always carved her own path.

Now Ashley has found a way to combine her two passions, science and design, as a way of directing her research. Her keen interest in material science is helping her tackle sustainability in the fashion industry.

Ashley is completing a PhD in the sustainable production of materials from textile waste.

Read more about Ashley and her research.

Transcript

[Ashley is sitting in front of a white background speaking directly to camera.]

Ashley: As a child, I'd always wanted to do something creative. Be a fashion designer, an actress. I wasn't entirely sure.

That decision was made for me when my science teacher told me I would fail science if I took any of those subjects at A-level. And so obviously I was going to take science because I'm a rebel. And if you tell me I can't do something, I'm going to go ahead and do it. So I decided to take maths, biology and chemistry. Not physics though, because I really hated electrical circuits.

After my A-levels, I went to university to study chemical engineering. Because by that point I loved maths and science and I thought that was a really great way of combining the things that I like. One of my favourite modules was material science where I learned about composite materials; where you can take two completely different components and put them together to form a new material. You get strength from something like fibres or particles, and you hold it all together in a matrix-like material, like a polymer. I love the idea that we can combine things that we like to make an even cooler material. As part of my degree I also had to do foundation physics. It just kept coming back to haunt me.

Overall, I enjoyed my degree. But it didn't light my fire. And I remember saying to my parents, “If I fail this degree, I'm just going to go and do fashion design.” And they'd say, “Why not?” My mum always used to make me feel like I could do anything, and my dad used to remind me that life is too short. After I graduated, cracks started to appear in my journey. I got sick and that knocked me off my stride for a bit. Then I lost my mum. My mum, who used to tell me that I could do anything, was suddenly gone and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, never mind whether I could do it or not. Luckily, I still had my dad and he reminded me that life was too short.

I still have that creative itch to scratch from when I was a kid, and so I decided I was going to go to fashion school and be a designer. And I did. And it was amazing. I met some great friends. I travelled the world. I had a blast!

In 2019, I moved back to the UK after working abroad for a few years and I found it really hard to settle into a job. I felt like I'd taken this career as far as I could and I wanted to know what my next challenge was. I kind of felt like I was back at square one. At the same time, I was working in an industry that was being called out for being unsustainable. Overconsumption, fast fashion, all this clothing waste. Did you know around 92 million tonnes of waste comes from the textile industry each year? All those beautiful clothes going into landfill. Surely there’ a better solution.

I felt like I needed to do something, but I couldn't do anything as a designer. I needed to understand more and learn more. And I figured that maybe this was my new challenge. So armed with my chemical engineering degree and some life experience, I enrolled onto a doctoral training program to do a PhD. And I'm now looking at developing sustainable materials to replace those made from fossil fuels, like composites.

So how do I make them sustainable? Well, traditional composite materials are made of polymers, or plastics as we know them, for example, that derive from fossil fuels. And these take a long time to degrade. They do not degrade very well at all. They also can break down into little microplastics, which is an even bigger problem. Couple that with the fact that we've combined two different materials in a composite that makes separation and recycling quite difficult too.

There are some natural polymers out there that do biodegrade, like cellulose, for example. Cellulose is found in plants, bacteria, fungi. It is everywhere! And it’s also pretty strong. So it has the capacity to replace less sustainable materials. Cellulose is also found in clothing. So you'll see in the form of cotton, or viscose, which is a regenerated cellulose fibre. You're probably wearing a bit of cellulose right now. Cellulose doesn't melt, but it does dissolve. And you don't need seriously nasty solvents to do it. When it dissolves, it transforms from one crystalline structure to another. This new crystalline structure isn't as strong as the first, but it makes a great binder and matrix to surround the undissolved cellulosic portion. Together that forms a composite made out of the exact same material, but in different forms. And it's an all-cellulose composite.

You can also dissolve waste textiles that can no longer be worn as clothing into a solution and spin it into a new fibre so that that fibre can be given a new life. So I guess we could take waste textiles, dissolve them, spin them into new fibres that could then be used in all cellulose composites.

So this is kind of where I am at the moment. I'm looking at the feasibility of all cellulose composites to see if we can make them functional, consistent and fit for purpose.

The reason I'm telling you this, and I have a point, I promise, is I used to jump from one thing to another, like they were completely separate things. Separate boxes. But they all came together at the end and led me to where I am now. It turns out I wasn't at square one back then. I was actually in the middle of my own circle. Sometimes we follow a path in life and it's not the final outcome. We need to take a detour or do something else. Try something else. And that's okay.

I'm a designer and I'm also an engineer. And we both love materials and what they can do. How they can change the style and function of a product.

Another thing I love about doing a PhD is that I get to demonstrate in the undergraduate physics labs. This week it's electrical circuits. And aren’t we all somewhere in our own circuit trying to find that light bulb moment?