Focusing on the fabric as the problem ignores the other major issue of the wasteful way we clean our clothes. This could potentially be much improved if we developed alternative ways of cleaning our clothes that didn’t waste resources and pollute as much as the current system: using lots of water, energy to heat the water, detergents to clean, energy to generate friction and circulation, dumping the waste into nature.
Are there any current efforts/research into new and better (efficient & sustainable) fabric cleaning systems?
I think Apple's current approach, where all the smarts (Machine Learning, Differential Privacy, Secure Enclave, etc.) reside on your device, not in the cloud, is the most promising. As imagined in so much sci-fi (eg. the Hosaka in Neuromancer) you build a relationship with your device which gets to know you, your habits and, most importantly in regard to search, what you mean when you search for something and what results are most likely to be relevant to you. An on-device search agent could potentially be the best solution because this very personal and, crucially, private device will know much more about you than you are (or should be) willing to forfeit to the cloud providers whose business is, ultimately, to make money off your data.
In fact a country selector would allow not just measures to be adapted but also the ingredients (eg. in some countries dry-yeast is a lot harder to find than the regular kind). Cuts of meat are different too and you often have to resort to Wikipedia's language options to see what a tenderloin cut (say) is in your own language. Finally you could have alternatives with which you could swap out any missing ingredients.
As always Douglas Adams had some keen, if slightly cynical, insight:
"The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years
radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme." Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.