Resources

• ReJu: A textile recycling company focusing on post-consumer polyester at molecular scale
• Textile Exchange: A global nonprofit driving sustainability in the textile industry
• Fashion for Good: An innovation platform supporting sustainable fashion startups
• Ellen MacArthur Foundation: circular economy frameworks
• Global Fashion Agenda: A nonprofit for industry collaboration in circular fashion
• SB 707 – California Textile EPR Bill: Proposed legislation requiring apparel producers to fund textile waste management
• EU Waste Framework Directive – Textile Waste: European policy requiring member states to implement separate collection of textile waste by 2025
• Massachusetts Textile Waste Ban: banning textiles from landfills and encouraging reuse and recycling

Host and Guest

Host: Mike Toffel, Professor, Harvard Business School (LinkedIn)

Guest: Patrik Frisk, CEO, ReJu (LinkedIn)

Transcript

Editor's Note: The following was prepared by a machine algorithm, and may not perfectly reflect the audio file of the interview.

Mike Toffel:

Great. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us here on Climate Rising.

Patrik Frisk:

Thank you, Mike. Happy to be here.

Mike Toffel:

So, Patrick, let's just begin with a little bit about your background and how you ended up at ReJu. You've had interesting experiences in the apparel and other sectors. Tell us a little bit about that.

Patrik Frisk:

Yeah, I've been in the textile and footwear industry for about 35 years. I've had a great opportunity to lead some really large brands through that time, both in the United States and Europe, and also to some extent in Asia. And what's unique about what I've done is the fact that I've actually covered the gamut. So, I've been both in textile and in footwear and in accessories.

And I've been doing that across many different categories, which is unusual. So, everything from, let's say, outdoor sport to luxury and sportswear and lifestyle stuff in between. And I've done it across the world. So, I have a pretty good idea of how this industry works.

And I got into this back end of the industry, if you like, in terms of trying to do my part to clean up a little bit here towards the end of my career. After all the things that I've done through my career in terms of selling things, I'm now trying to make sure that we're also able to manage things when they're no longer used. And I got into this because my last job as CEO at Under Armour was about, you know, we were in the active sports category and a lot of the product that we made was made out of polyester.

And like most other companies and brands, we were trying to make sure that we were making it with as much recycled product as possible. But we found that that was starting to get harder to come by. We also realized that we needed to start to adjust to a world where we needed to take care of the textile that was being thrown away, not just taking the recycled product from bottles and the bottling industry in terms of recycling.

And what I found was that that was hard and there weren't a lot of technologies available. There weren’t a lot of products available. So, we decided at Under Armour at that point in time to join forces with IBM and Technip Energies to commercialize the technology that IBM had. That's how I got into this. And then ultimately when I left Under Armour, I was asked to really try to commercialize this technology. And that's where we're at right now.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. So, at Under Armour, what was the driver to try and shift toward using as much as possible recycled polyester or PET pellets, however you would think about it? What was pushing you to do that? Was it cost? Was it like a sustainability mission? Was it customers, investors? What was the impetus?

Patrik Frisk:

It was a combination of different things. Like most other companies, we were starting to set some really aggressive targets for becoming more sustainable. And certainly, we also wanted to make sure that we were waning ourselves off virgin products as much as possible, in this case oil, for a number of different reasons. Certainly, some were financial, some were simply the fact that we knew that at some point in the future we're going to run out of this resource. So, it was good hedging for the future, if you like. But we have already started to make a lot of adjustments to our material pallet to get ready for recycling for the future. So, we were making this a strategic move across the business. That's how we got it.

Mike Toffel:

And tell us a little bit about the technology that led you to jump ship and get into ReJu, work in the operating company that's working on this. What does the technology do?

Patrik Frisk:

Yeah, so the interesting part when we started to look at this and we started to refine our view on it was that we saw that it was really important to focus on technology that could address one of the biggest societal problems at same time. And that was post-consumer textile waste. That's really where the problem sits as you look into the future in terms of what's going to happen with all of this textile waste. 80 % of all textile waste today in the United States, for example, sits in the general waste stream. If you think about the fact that what we're talking about here is polyester and it will not go away if you put it into a landfill and you're using a finite resource and the only way to get rid of it is to burn it, that is not a great path forward.

Clearly, to be able to address circularity with this product, you needed a technology that could chemically take the polyester out of all the other stuff and then depolymerize it and return it back into the supply chain or the go-to-market, if you like, of the textile industry. So that was really what caught our eye initially. And then that is what also is needed if you're really going to be able to scale this as it relates to the waste problem.

Now, from a technological perspective, to be able to scale, you also need technology that can do this fast, that can do it using as little energy as possible, and that has a yield that's high enough for it to be viable, so to speak, in terms of the output that you get. And what we saw promising signs of early on was that this technology had all the above.

Mike Toffel:

And so, this is, in a sense, a chemical plant where you're taking in textiles made of polyester and you're putting them into, I'm picturing a vat with some chemicals, maybe some stirring, and then out comes, I don't know, some gray stream that you palletize or put into some sort of blocks. That's my imagination of working, but you tell me what it really looks like.

Patrik Frisk:

Yeah, I wish it was just that beautifully easy. You know, I think part of the problem here is that if you are intent on taking post-consumer waste and you open that bat that you were talking about, what you're going to get in through that bat is going to be a lot of stuff. And you're going to get stuff that's old. So, in other words, you would have to be prepared to have things that are 40, 50 years old, lots of different mixes of fabric and contaminants.

We estimate that there's somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 different chemicals that have been used in the apparel and homeware textile industry over the last 40, 50 years. So, the first thing you need to actually do is, and this is a problem, and this is why we like to talk about ourselves as actually a circular textile system enabler, because you can't just take anything and just put it into the vat.

You have to first aggregate it. You have to make sure that you have the right fiber that you're trying to do this with. And if you look across both North America and Europe, you're going to find that the most common mix is 70 % polyester, 30 % cotton, something like that. So that means that if you're going to be regenerating or recycling general textile waste, you're going to need to be able to chemically address that mix.

But before you do that, you have to get that mix out of all the other stuff. So, you have to sort, you have to aggregate, you have to sort, and then you have to take out all of these zippers and buttons and what have you, all the disruptors that could disrupt your process. Then you can put it into the vat. And in the vat, what you do is take out the polyester. So, this is done chemically, right? You basically extract the polyester, and then you are now in a molecule environment where you're bringing that poly, which is many molecules tied together, you're breaking the chain and you're taking it back into the singular molecule, into a monomer. And in doing so, you take all that gray stuff you're talking about, you take that out, so you get to white powder, basically. And that enables you then to restart and polymerize that back into polyester and then yarn and then fabric and then so forth into apparel. So, it is a chemical process, and you need to do preparatory steps before you start to get the stuff cleaned up.

Mike Toffel:

Okay, great. So that's a great description. So, let's work our way upstream, into the supply chain. So, as you described, what goes into the vat you hope to be a subset of all the material that people throw out or try and recycle, which is what? You have 100% polyester products. There's a mix of polyester cotton. Presumably the things that are zero polyester like wool or cotton, you don't want those in your vat at all because they don't add value to your final product. So, you're trying to sort out this mix of waste apparel or waste textiles. How much of that is done by your organization and how much of that's done by partners or by municipalities? Take us through a little bit of that upstream supply chain collection and sorting process.

Patrik Frisk:

And here comes the shocker, right? None of that's been done today. So, what blew my mind away? One of reasons I'm still here, slogging away, working at it every day, day in and day out is because what I saw when I looked into this was kind of staggering. We do not aggregate waste, textile waste, post-consumer textile waste at scale anywhere today in the world. There's a lot of it being donated to non-profits and what have you that certainly part of what's going on, but it's a very, very small part. Like I said, the majority is just simply thrown away. And we do not aggregate that; it goes in the general waste streams. So today, actually out of all of the textiles that's being made in the world, 87% of it today either goes into a landfill or is being incinerated. So, the first thing you need to do is aggregate. And when you do that, you get everything, like you said.

You then want to sort it, but now you want to sort it for fiber, because the good news with our technology is that we can bunch a lot of stuff together. Every garment doesn't need to be 70-30 or 60-40 or whatever. The whole thing that we put in needs to be about 70-30. So, there's a way to test that. But before you get there, you might want to sort out all of the 100 % polyester. You might want to sort out all of the 100 % cotton or wool because there are people or companies that take care of that. So, you want to facilitate that. But you also don't want to sort too much because if you start sorting too much, every time you sort it costs money. And in sorting today in apparel, the only sorting that exists, 99.9 % of all sorting of apparel in the world is done by hand.

Why is that? Well, because we only sort for appearance today. Because the only sorting that goes on initially is to take the stuff that can be sold secondhand out of the general waste that's being donated. And then what we sort for secondary is for things like insulation and maybe for wipes or some stuff like that. So, if you want to sort for what we do, which is regeneration or recycling, you need to do it with a much faster way of doing it than by hand because you're going to sort through enormous volumes. So, you need semi-automatic, you need conveyor belts, you need optical reading, you need infrared, and that's where the problem is. There are none of those that have been built at scale yet in the world. So you have no aggregation really happening. You have no conveyor belts that have been built. Now it's happening as I speak, as we speak.

One of the good examples is the relationship we have with waste management and goodwill in the United States, for example, where we're now starting to experiment with pick up at household level and starting this sorting, but it's very, very early days. So, you need to be able to build out the infrastructure upstream. And that's why we look upon ourselves as systems builders because we're actually facilitating this today, both in North America and in Europe, to get this pipeline of the future ready.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. And so as far as the sorting challenges, it seems to me there are at least two. One is getting sufficient density and scale to make it cost effective. But the other is the technology itself. Of course, we have the option of conveyor belts. That's been around for a long time. But the part that thinks that's hard is using camera vision, for example, with some sort of trained algorithm to be able to distinguish is this garment

Patrik Frisk:

Exactly.

Mike Toffel:

70-30, is it 100 % cotton, is it wool? And imagine that piece is the part that's hard right now from a technology perspective.

Patrik Frisk:

That's correct. So, what happens, you have to use several technologies. You have optical reading, have infrared, and there are some other technologies. But in general, you have to have this stuff passed through several steps, right, to get so that means it's going to cost something to get this done. And when you start to think about the volumes here, so the full scale the regeneration plants that we're now planning to get built here in the next few years, there will be about 50,000 tons, which means that we will take about 60,000 tons into each one of these facilities to get to that granularity that we need, which is actually a very broad subset, you still need to sort through 200,000 tons. That is a lot of stuff, right? There is a need to build this out over time and that's also one of the reasons why you know, ReJu is one of the few companies that are actually in ReJu so to speak. Because a lot of people would ask why are you not in Asia? Like that's where a lot of the supply chain is for textile manufacturing and so forth. Well, the waste is here.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, and where are you initially locating?

Patrik Frisk:

So, we're locating our first two regeneration hubs in Europe and in the US. So, we're going to be close to high density areas where we have access to a lot of the waste, basically. That’s for, of course, environmental reasons, partially, but also just practical, right? That's where you have the easiest way of aggregation. So, you're getting really two things in one there. You're able to aggregate fast, vast, and you're doing it with a lower carbon footprint.

Mike Toffel:

Because the density piece is because when you send trucks around, whether it be you or suppliers, shorter distances between houses, you can collect more per truck run. So super interesting.

Let's talk a little bit about the policy side. Now here in Massachusetts, where I am, we have a relatively new state law that prohibits residents from disposing of clothing in general waste. So, we have a curbside recycling program where you have a new bin or a bag where you put out textiles. I imagine that it is instrumental in the process of trying to reduce sorting costs so that no one's having to go through the general trash and try and extract textiles. At least there's a textile stream. I don't know how common that is around America or in Europe where you're looking. Is that a key driver of where you're going to locate where they have the policy environment to at least require some pre-sorting by consumers?

Patrik Frisk:

It certainly helps, And you're right. Massachusetts is the only place, I believe, today in the US. In Europe, they are now directing. There's a waste directive that started to be implemented on the first of January 25. Four countries are now doing what you're doing in Massachusetts. All countries in Europe are required to do it within the next years, next two years. Eventually, it's going to happen in more places. It's just not practical because there are lots of things that drive this.

One thing is landfills, for example. Landfill space, especially in small countries or tight areas in Europe or anywhere, is getting hard to come by. And you aren't able to incinerate everywhere anymore. And incineration also costs money. There are multiple layers of things that are going to be driving regulation ultimately. You also have the extended producer responsibility aspect of this, is something that is used, of course, in wood and aluminum and in plastics and other areas, where you're now starting to ask the brand or the retailer to be responsible for the ways that they create. So essentially putting a cost on every item in the beginning of the process and then refunding some of that.

right at the end of the process, while you also help to fund some of this build out. That’s one thing that's happening in California now, for example, with the SB707 that began last year, which is still in its early days in California, but it's now also debated in Washington state, New York state, and here in Europe in many countries as well. You have both the waste societal problem, waste on one side, and then you have the extended producer responsibility for the industry on the other side. And these things are starting to come together. And since this is such a big problem, right, and it's growing so fast, because we create more and more waste every year, and it's getting harder and harder to get rid of it. It is just a question of...

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, this extended producer responsibility has been around for a long time, at least in concept. And I think the idea basically is to implement the polluter pay principle by putting some of the disposal cost into the price by basically charging a surcharge. You see this, for example, in electronics. I think Germany's been an early adopter of this. And that money gets set aside and dedicated to the waste recycling of those products is sort of the theory anyway, but it sounds like California is also catching on. I hadn't been aware that this is, is this an issue, has producer responsibility entered the garment or the apparel space or that's what California is doing?

Patrik Frisk:

Yeah, that's what they're starting to do. And that's what other states are looking at in the US now as well. And it isn't happening tomorrow, but we can see a trajectory here over the next three to four years where this will happen step by step.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. All right, well, we've been diving into the upstream and the supply chains side. Let's flip the script here and talk about the demand side. So, both the demand for, well, let's start with the demand for your product, right, which is the powder, do we call it PET? I'm not sure what stage is that. It's a monomer still.

Patrik Frisk:

No, it's not. So, we do it once it becomes a monomer in the regeneration hub, we take it from there and we put it into a normal polymerization factory, and we make ReJu polyester out of it. So, we deliver either polyester in pellet form, which is normal. You can also deliver it in staple form, which is the beginning of the fiber process into yarn to our customers. That's the product that ultimately, we deliver.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. And who then are your customers? Because you're collecting this in Europe, you're collecting this in North America. Are these manufacturers somewhat proximate to your process, or are these going back to Asia at the beginning of the supply chain of so much of today's apparel?

Patrik Frisk:

Well, this is what's so interesting. First of all, this is going to take a long time. So, when you think about the scale of this, we make about 124 million tons of textiles in the world every year. These latest numbers come out of the textile exchange, is the industry organization that looks at the statistics of how much is being made.

And we made 124 million tons in 2023. That was up from 116 million tons in 2022. So about 8-million-ton increase, all of that in polyester. Out of that, about 56, 57 % is polyester, right? That's coming out of all of that. So today, 13 % of that polyester is produced from recycled bottles.

So, when you think about demand for recycled polyester product, it's already there. It's already been proven, right? It's already being used. Now, the issue here, of course, is the fact that there's a bottling industry that also uses bottles for recycling. That's one thing. So, in some areas in the world, like in Europe, you now have to use 25 % of your content in a recycled bottle that has to be recycled product.

So, they are now already under regulation to actually have recycled products inside of their product. And you could also ask that if we're going to be making recycled textile fibers from recycled bottles, and we're going to 80 % or 87 % of those textiles away, and we're taking it out of what's already kind of a loop on the one side, and we're putting it into a finite loop, finite, linear model on the other doesn't make a lot of sense. So, I think that the way to think about this is, they’re going to be demanding for this type of product? Absolutely. What will it be driven by? It'll be driven by a lot of different things. It'll be driven by part a shift from recycled polyester from bottles over time, because that's not a sustainable way to think about feedstock or, supply chain.

It would be driven by the societal issue that we talked so much about the fact that you know Countries will start to look at all this waste and they don't know what to do with it And if you put polyester in the ground, it's not going to go away and not everybody's going to continue to burn it So you got to be you got to be thinking about that and then ultimately, know when you think about The fact that you're also needing to grow most likely right? I mean most brands have an ambition to grow. What are you going to grow with right? So, it isn't just about what you're doing today. It's about what you're going to be at to do tomorrow.

So all of these different aspects of the business and then you layer on top of that extended producer responsibility that's going to be ending up mandating some sort of recycled content right in your product in the end because that's another way to drive EPR or extended producer responsibility is to make sure that people are actually using what's being made from the recycled product back into their garments.

So, if you're a brand, if I were a CEO today, like I used to be for these big brands, and was looking at this, I would probably at least try to get some stuff at the bottom of the barrel for the future. And when we talk about that future and these vast volumes that are being produced today, it's going to take decades to mature this business, right? To get the volumes that will even be filling a tiny, tiny bit at the bottom of that barrel. We believe that 10 years from now, this could be potentially 1 to 2 % of polyester textile fibers for the apparel industry, for example, in 10 years. So, there's more of a scarcity model that's being built here than anything, if you like, because there will be a higher and higher demand of this, we believe, going forward. Part of the problem right now is nobody has done it at scale yet.

Mike Toffel:

Right, right. And the other problem is like the whole collection infrastructure you described, right? It's expensive, it's complicated. It's how much of its government, how much of its private sector, a lot of hands in the process.

Patrik Frisk:

Exactly, yeah. And you know what's important when you try to build a circular textile system, right, is that you have to make sure that it's sustainable. So, in other words, everybody has to benefit. So there has to be an opportunity for everybody to make money, not just to make it work, but to make money from the system. We believe that can be done. But it requires adjustment, it requires change, it requires new business models.

Mike Toffel:

So where are you on this cost curve? Are the products that you're producing more expensive at par, less expensive than Virgin? And a lot of times these companies that start up in this way are more expensive initially until they gain both learning, going through the experience curve, and also scaling up once they get some economies of scale going. So, it wouldn't surprise me at all if you're currently at higher cost, but you're aspiring to be at least where you are today?

Patrik Frisk:

I think it's fair to say, yes, we're to be much higher, I would say, in terms of how to think about an absolute price. But I was also part of this industry where we introduced recycled polyester from bottles that was much higher. It's still not on parity. There’s 13 % of the entire polyester for textile industry I was talking about. It's still 20 to 30 % higher than virgin. And here we are 30 years later.

So, is industry willing to invest a little extra into this? I believe they are because of all the reasons I talked about before, right? The fact that you need to make sure that you are taking care of the problem you're creating, but you also want to make sure you're de-risking, you're getting ready for the future, you want to provide an ability to grow for the future, right? Because this is going to be needed. That's certainly true, but it's also true that it's very different in the textile world when you talk about polyester compared to a bottle, for example. You think about a bottle, all the packaging there is polyester. In a garment, first, we're talking about a blend, very often at 70-30. And then you're talking about an ingredient. It's polyester. Polyester is an ingredient in the yarn, in the fabric, in the make, in the garment.

And when you look at the cost of polyester in the entire value chain, if the entire value chain is 100%, it's only a few percentage points. So even if you increase price quite dramatically on that small component, in terms of the effect on your value chain and your margin and ultimately the end consumer price, it's minimal. But it has a dramatic effect on your business from a societal perspective, but also, quite frankly, on your carbon emissions footprint as well because we are about 50 % lower in carbon footprint.

Mike Toffel: (29:29.717)

Got it. I was going to ask you about that. So, it's about half of carbon footprint. Interesting. Are we starting to see any policy movement on, you mentioned earlier about some policies for bottles with required recycled content. Are we starting to see any movement on that with clothing? Like clothing that has polyester at some point have to have at least 5 % recycled content.

Patrik Frisk:

Yes, in Europe there's a lot of movement right now. There's a number of bills that are on the table and directives that are being contemplated right now. One of them I told you about already, which is the waste frame directive in terms of segregating textile waste out from general waste stream. There's also now on the table a potential also for the same thing as it relates to how much content has to be recycled fiber in a garment. There are numerous things that have been already implemented around eco-design, environmental labeling, et cetera, et cetera. So, there's a whole host of things that are going on right now in Europe. In the US, it's a little bit different. This is driven much more from an end producer responsibility perspective, or as in your case in Massachusetts, a waste specific. So, in the US versus Europe, in the US it is driven state by state. In Europe, it's driven more as a European Clean Act Directive, which is now new, it's not called the Green Deal anymore. They're changing the name and they're driving it a little bit differently. But circularity is really important for the European Union.

That's the umbrella that this kind of comes under ultimately. Some countries like the Netherlands, for example, have an ambition to be circular by 2050. So, they go beyond that zero, right, in terms of how they think about their country. So, a lot of different things are going on. But when you look at the total amount of regulation and rules and what you have in the textile industry, and you back up, you go back 10 years, and you look, it's a steady, steady, steady growth, right? It continues to increase. And that has to do, of course, with the fact that we're making so much more of it. And it's getting harder and harder to get rid of.

Mike Toffel:

So, what role do brands have here? I can imagine at least two. One is, is there an opportunity that they might start marketing their products by bragging about the recycled content in them, as you sometimes see in other industries? And the other is, on a design process, for many years, there's this idea of design for X. And the X can sometimes be, for example, in computers and other electronics goods, designed for disassembly, designed for recycling. So, for example, in this case, you could imagine shifting some of the components to a garment, whether it be buttons or zippers, to make it easier to strip off at the sorting process or maybe make them of polyester so they can be melted down and not have to be stripped off. So those are just two examples on the design piece. But if their designers aren't thinking about this, they're not necessarily contributing to the solution. So, either on the marketing side or the design side, what are you seeing on the brand side?

Patrik Frisk:

I think this is a huge opportunity. think even starting from something at the very origin, the yarn, right? So polyester, for example, today sheds a lot of microplastics, right? There's an opportunity to make better yarns that do not shed as much. There's an opportunity to make better fabrics and better garments, also from both the materials and from a design perspective to make all of what you just said easier to handle in the regeneration or recycling process. And we are engaged in that from a ReJu perspective, helping the brands in this, first of all, integration into their supply chain with our material, which is really important. But then also from a traceability perspective, right? So, part of this also to make sure that we really address what you said, which is how do we take care of it when it comes back? Part of it is how you design it so it's easy to take apart.

And part of it is to understand what's inside of it. So, can we do that faster? And IBM was an early partner. It's still a strong partner with us. And now we're working with them on the traceability aspect, getting ready for digital product passport, right? So, we do not only deliver ReJu polyester, but we also deliver a textile-to-textile product that we have not left chain of custody from the moment it was aggregated as textile waste until we made it into polyester.

So, when the brand gets their polyester from us, they also get all the data that they need to make sure that they're continuing to build a digital passport all the way to the end consumer. So, for the consumer, this would benefit them in terms of understanding exactly what's inside of their garments and no more green washing, right? Because now you actually know what's there. And the other thing, of course, is that if we also make everything just a little bit better, just a little bit better, they will most likely pay extra for that rather than for green, right? Because we know that the consumer is not ready to pay extra for green. I don't believe I think that is pie in the sky stuff. They pay for design; they pay for performance. So, let's make it better. You know, and we're able to do that. That's not that hard. Because the beauty of our process when we get back to that ReJu polyester is that's an absolutely clean polyester.

So, we've taken all the bad stuff out and now you have a new beginning. Why does recycling to regenerate have to be a secondary product? We believe it can be an even better product than it was in its first life because you now have a new start, right? You have a clean product, and the beauty is we can do it infinitely.

Mike Toffel:

Super interesting. So, let's look forward and talk about some of the policy efforts that are underway. Tell us a little bit about other trends or technologies that have you excited about the future of this space.

Patrik Frisk:

Well, yeah, thank you. There's a lot of stuff I think that's going on. And one of the most exciting things for those that embrace this is the fact that if you're looking ahead, there are going to be a lot of new business models here created on the back of this, because you're going to need to start to do things differently, right? And you're going to have to, and that's through the entire system, the entire value chain. So, there's an upstream opportunity, right, to figure out the handling of the waste aspect. There is certainly what we do, but on the back of what we do, what you said earlier, like are there opportunities to make different types of products that fit into this new process, right? And that's where we're starting to see super manufacturers, people that make buttons and people like that starting to think about what this new world means, right, going forward. And on both sides, there is technology involved, both from a digital product passport perspective in terms of traceability through this chain, through various optic reading instruments and AI upstream as it relates to thinking about how to identify garments and what's inside of them. And the same thing, of course, then downstream because here's the other opportunity. If you're a brand or retailer, is there an opportunity to also look at your business model? Now, if we're going through a more ReJu situation, for all the different reasons that's happening out there right now, whether it's your political, whether it's tariffs, whatever it might be. And if you were sitting in a leading position in a company where you can make decisions around this, would you not try to de-risk yourself a little bit? And as a consequence of that, would you not also look at your business model and say, you know what, if I were to bring some of this closer to where my customer is, what kind of business model would that trigger? What systems do I need to drive that? And here again, the most popular world of the moment, AI, there's a lot of things that are right now happening in identification, also in that area of quick turn, lower inventories, that should definitely be on everybody's agenda, to be able to unlock also more efficient business down the road.

That’s what I would be looking at, right? If I were sitting in that chair today and we have, you know, at Reju, all of that expertise as well. So, we're certainly having those discussions, and some people are getting excited about it. You some people see this as an opportunity. It's not all doom and gloom, right? This is actually something that we think is inevitable. You know, if you are on this, on the get-go, you're going to have an advantage down the road because it's going to be hard to get a lot of volume of this early on and so you better get in line.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah. So, in some other sectors that are trying to think about decarbonizing, whether it be fuels or even building materials, there's a movement toward biomaterials, right? So, for example, biofuels or using wood structures instead of steel. And there's a little bit of bio going on in the material composition for garments as well. So, talk to us a little bit about this 70-30 and whether there's a potential for some bio replacement materials. So first, maybe you've mentioned 70-30 as a mix. Just help me and our listeners understand what the magic is of 70-30. Why do we have these poly mixes in the first place? Because a long time ago, some clever people said if you can have things that are 100 % recyclable or 100 % compostable. Those would be the goal. And this mixing creates all these problems. So why are we locked into this problem?

Patrik Frisk:

You're absolutely right. So historically, it has to do with partially with really two things. is durability and the other one is cost. And the third one, I guess, would be accessibility as well. Polyester is made from oil. And then you have cotton, which is a natural fiber. It's not easy when you mix the two from a chemical perspective, right? But it's really good if you're making garments out of it because you get all the benefits of the poly and all the benefits from the cotton. So, cotton is nice and soft, and we all love that feeling of cotton, but the polyester gives structure, gives strength, and takes away some of the cost because cotton tends to cost more.

So, and sometimes it's harder to come by. know, cotton is a lot less common than polyester is, right? Polyester also has a wonderful supply chain. You know, basically if you think about oil and pipelines and oil refineries and cracking places, houses, what have you, that's built for something different than textiles originally. We're free riding on this beautiful, hyper-efficient highway that's been built, right? Cotton, you've got to grow it, you've got to use people, it's like, it's not uncontroversial. So that's why we started to mix these two things way back and now we're trying to untangle it, right? It's not ideal, I tell you. And not only is it difficult because they're two different materials, it's also difficult because you use different types of dye, for example. the dye. Once you dye something, and it's funny that we call cotton a natural material. It's natural before we touch it, but once we start doing stuff to it, it's not so natural anymore. You know, all of the dyeing we do with cotton, for example, especially cheap cotton, is hard to get out of the cotton, whereas it's easy for us actually to get it out of the polyester. It's one of the problems, so that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to regenerate cotton.

We do that, so we get about 28 % or so, the other 70-30, we actually take that out of our process as well. We call it cotton recycling, and we give it to the recycling of cotton people. So, we have, you know, to make sure we take care of that as well. But in terms of bio, there's an absolute possibility to make polyester bio.

So biopolyester would be part of our future, absolutely. It already exists to some extent, but it's not cost efficient to make it yet. And it would require natural materials. It means that you've got to grow corn or something like that to make it. So, there's always an offset here. That's the other thing. Nothing is for free. But I see a future where you will have more biomaterials coming into play.

And even in the case of polyester, I think that in the next couple of decades, there will be suppliers of biopolyester to start to offset some of the virgin that's currently there for sure. Yes, there is a future in textiles that will include biomaterials.

Mike Toffel:

Great, great, super interesting. So let me transition to my final question that I ask all guests, is for those who are interested in this conversation, interested in the market that you're trying to serve, either from an organization that's trying to take back apparel and waste textiles, or maybe trying to work with the brands to sort of nudge them in a direction, or maybe even activists to try and sort of bring light to this issue. What resources or materials do you recommend for them to learn more about this space?

Patrik Frisk:

Yes, there are a couple of great industry organizations that are easy to follow that have the facts, right? So, Textile Exchange, for example, is one that you can easily look into. They will have all the facts, some of the things that I've stated here today. There are other organizations like Fashion for Good, Ellen MacArthur Foundation is another one, Global Fashion Summit Agenda, which is another big thing that goes on in the world of textiles. They're all good resources to tap into and look at what's going on. You can also follow, read you of course. We will be continuously updating the work that we do on our homepage or on LinkedIn. The other thing you can do of course is to follow the brands directly. Most big brands today, I would say most big brands today, have a sustainability report. And they're actually very good.

They pretty much tell you exactly what they're doing and what they're intending to do. And all is not doom and gloom in the textile industry. I think there's a lot of super serious brands out there that are trying to do the right thing. And they're just trying to make sure that they're doing it in a responsible way to their stakeholders as well. And we all realize in the industry that this is going to take time. So, I would do both. I would both check the industry organizations, and I would check with the brands themselves, and they are a resource and most of them, especially the big ones, are very transparent as well.

Mike Toffel:

Great. Well, Patrick, it's been wonderful to have you as a guest. Thank you so much for spending time with us here on Climate Rising.

Patrik Frisk:

Thank you very much, Mike. A pleasure. Anytime.