Bret Schnitker, Emily Lane, Andrea Ferris
December 17, 2024
Andrea Ferris 00:02
Every 500 shirts that are manufactured, one of them is lost as fiber pollution during the manufacturing process. I think about all of like the abusive and the abrasive actions and the washing or even when we're creating our fabrics of fleece, it might be brushed. I mean, there are fibers shedding all over the place. So during manufacture, certainly during our use. And you know, sometimes you're just you'll see the sun shining through the window and in the air there are small fibers, right? So our carpets, polyester is everywhere. Synthetics are everywhere. You know, it's in our carpets, it's in our window coverings, it's in our bedding, not just the clothes we wear. It's all over. So while we're using them, small fibers are shedding.
Emily Lane 01:01
Welcome to Clothing Coulture, a fashion industry podcast at the intersection of technology and innovation. I'm Emily Lane.
Bret Schnitker 01:09
I'm Bret Schnitker. We speak with experts and disruptors who are moving the industry forward and discuss solutions to real industry challenges.
Emily Lane 01:17
Clothing Coulture is produced by Stars Design Group, a global design and production house with more than 30 years of experience. Welcome back to another episode of ClothingCoulture. Today, we're continuing our trend and havingconversations in the realm of sustainability. Not not too long ago, Bret came to meelated, because he found what you called Bret The Holy Grail.
Bret Schnitker 01:47
It is the Holy Grail, in my opinion,
Emily Lane 01:50
in the in this poly, polyester problem that really
Bret Schnitker 01:56
bigger than that synthetic problem, because it addresses both poly and nylon today, and hopefully other substrates soon.
Emily Lane 02:02
Right. So we've had a lot of conversations talking about the poly challenges, and in this discovery of this Holy Grail solution, it came to light that this solution was founded by a friend of yours, Bret.
Bret Schnitker 02:17
An old colleague from many years ago. Is that was really interesting? Yeah, I had, I think we had posted something. I had come across this. I was really fascinated. After getting going through as much detail as I could find on this. There wasn't a lot of depth in detail, but I kept looking at it and saying, Is this possible, that that all of this talk that we've been having, that the industry, frankly, has been having forever that, you know, micro particulates and poly filling landfills for, yes, you know, 300 years plus. And you know, dealing with all these things, that there's a solution out there. And frankly, there has been a solution out there, yes, a little bit of a secret for a while, and, and, you know, the conversation always been, we can't solve it at the consumer recyclable level. I think that's just a big political game. It never solves anything. It has to be solved at the source. And this group, I think, has done it,
Emily Lane 03:14
yes. So we welcome to the table this long time friend of yours, Bret. Andrea Ferris, thank you so much Andrea for joining us. And as we mentioned, she is the founder of this incredible company called CiCLO and we're going to kind of talk about this amazing innovation that is that is really starting to make some waves in the market. Welcome Andrea.
Andrea Ferris 03:38
Thank you so good to be here. I really appreciate it.
Emily Lane 03:42
So Bret, you have mentioned that this incredible technology had been around for a little bit. I want, let's circle to that in a little little while. I really like for us to just build a foundation for our conversation in laying some of the land of this poly and synthetics problem. You know, there's some key challenges that these textiles bring, of course, of which, Andrea, you've created a solution. But let's, let's help people understand the the true challenge of of of these synthetic fabrics.
Andrea Ferris 04:20
Yeah, sure. I mean, I can, I can share with you just a little bit of our history and kind of like, what was the problem we were trying to solve from the beginning? What did we identify to get where we are here today? And I think we have a pretty interesting story. You know, it's a pretty interesting story. Well, you know. So our story actually dates back to, like, 12 years ago. And you know, as you've been saying, like, oh, you know, sometimes people think that we're new in the market, but we're not. And so go back all the way to, like, 2012 and you know, Bret, we were doing some work together, but I was, I was actually working on the McDonald's uniforms program. Which is a huge textile program. It's almost all polyester, and I've been managing that program at that point for about eight years. And we were trying to do all kinds of things in the way of sustainability, actually, like we were trying to recycle the textiles, it was impossible at the time, we were looking at, how do we remove poly bags from them? You know, how do we make how do we make the products that we're making better than they are today? And one of the things we were using was recycled polyester. So that was, these were all good starts. But really, what kind of prompted this whole thing is that we realized that even if we're using, say, recycled polyester, the materials that we're using were really polluting the environment, and so we just had this idea, like, how can we make a better polyester for this McDonald's uniforms program that we were managing? And you know, I'm actually not a scientist by background,
Bret Schnitker 06:00
but play one on podcast.
Andrea Ferris 06:02
I play one on podcast. And I've learned a lot
Bret Schnitker 06:05
yes
Andrea Ferris 06:05
Over the years, yeah. And I do think, you know, even as it comes to the innovation side, I think that not being scientist and being so green actually, I mean, at that point, I didn't even know how polyester was produced. I was really looking at things, say, like fabric forward. So I think being so green was actually helpful, because I I didn't see anything as impossible. So, you know, I had this idea. Okay. Well, you know, plastic can be biodegradable, and if we have to be using plastic in these textiles, which we do, right, because it's available, it's affordable, it's super high performance. Then, you know, let's see if we can figure out how to make it biodegradable. And so again, I was working at a uniforms company, and the guys who own that are now my business partners, but super entrepreneurs. And you know, when somebody brings a good idea to the table, they like, great. Let's run with that. Let's see figure it out. Do how are we going to get that done? Well, that's kind of how it started,
Emily Lane 07:07
yeah, and you're right. You know, working on a program that that that is that large, you know that that you do have the opportunity when solving a solution for something that has those many units, now you're starting to make impact. You know, when we look at some of the statistics, currently, 60% of the textiles made for apparel are in these synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon, and plan
Bret Schnitker 07:29
is they're going up to 85% I mean, based upon all these challenges with cotton, right? Absolutely.
Emily Lane 07:34
And as we know, these materials don't have the same rate of biodegradability that natural fibers do you know 500 years or some of those estimates in a landfill for polyester, nylon to break down, and-
Bret Schnitker 07:49
it breaks down, it's not really biodegradable, even then it breaks down into micro particulates and getting smaller and smaller.
Emily Lane 07:55
So there's some real, real challenges to overcome with when battling against the desirability of the performance of these of these fabrics, but then the long term impact of of what they contribute to our to our world the other some of the other challenges I I've read on your website are related to shedding the shedding of polyester. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Andrea Ferris 08:23
Yeah, yeah. So if you, if we think about almost all of our textiles, almost all of our fabrics shed, right? So they're shedding when we're manufacturing them. There was a study that was put out by the Nature Conservancy, who did a report with Bane maybe three or four years ago, and they actually called out that for, say, every 500 shirts that are manufactured, one of them is lost as fiber pollution during the manufacturing process. But think about all of like the abusive and the abrasive actions and the washing or even when we're creating our fabrics of fleece, it might be brushed. I mean, there are fibers shedding all over the place. So during manufacture, certainly during our use, and you know, sometimes you're just you'll see the sun shining through the window and in the air, there are small fibers, right? So our carpets, polyester is everywhere. Synthetics are everywhere. You know, it's in our carpets, it's in our window coverings, it's in our bedding, not just the clothes we wear. It's all over. So while we're using them, small fibers are shedding, and then while we're washing them also So, and that is pretty well studied at this point, especially the washing, because it's an environment where it can actually be measured. To some extent, there are statistics that say that one load of laundry can release up to 18 million of these tiny fibers from textiles, right? And we don't really see it in our washing machine as much. But you know, think about even in the dryer. I mean every load of laundry that tou run has a huge amount of lint that comes out of it, right, right? So these are tiny fibers, and if they're polyester there or nylon, they are plastic, just like plastic bottles that wind up in the environment. They, you know, don't biodegrade, basically. And even though there are estimates that say, Okay, well, maybe plastics would take 400 years to biodegrade and different environment or whatever. Nobody really knows for sure, right? We haven't had plastic for that long, and none of us have been on earth that long, so we know that there can be, like, very, very small amounts of biodegradation in the environment. But, you know, tiny amounts, it's very hard for microorganisms to digest plastics. So that is, you know, those numbers are just, we always say it's practically forever I mean, you have forever chemicals, and you kind of have these forever fibers,
Bret Schnitker 10:54
yeah.
Emily Lane 10:55
So you decided to put your scientist hat on and create this new solution, this nature based solution. How did you even go about this?
Andrea Ferris 11:05
Yeah, so Well, the first thing I did because, you know, we were doing this to solve our own need. We were not thinking, let's create something and create another company and be where we are today. So the first thing we did was, we just looked around to see, was there something already in the market that could solve for this problem, where we could have something that left our textiles as durable as we needed them to be, but also biodegradable once they wind up as pollution in the environment. And what I found during that time is that biodegradable plastics certainly have a science behind them, but that there was nothing that was specific to the needs of textiles. So when I'm talking about like the needs of textiles, I knew that we needed some kind of chemistry that was going to work in our existing supply chains, right? Couldn't? There's no way that huge, yeah, so it had to work in existing supply chains. Again, the durability piece was so important. I mean, we could not introduce something that was going to make a lesser product that's that would be, you know, a non starter there. So the durability had to be affordable. So, you know, we had to be able to control what the cost was ourselves, not be at the whim of any any other manufacturer. Had to be safe. So that mean, I had, I had to know exactly, what are these different chemicals in here, and how is it, you know, causing the biodegradation. And then, you know, really, to have a product that is truly viable, it has to be available all around the world. Because, you know, I mean, program that we were working on didn't have one supply chain, has multiple suppliers. And over the years, you know, of course, supply chains change as well. So we knew it had to be something that could be available around the world. So, you know, we really just kind of set out to do that on our own. We did a lot of our own initial research on like what kinds of things can activate a biodegradation mechanism. And then we hired a Chief Scientist, and he came from a cradle to cradle background. He's chemical engineer, and we assigned him with the task. We said, hey, you know, here's where we're at today. Here's what our knowledge base. Let's you know, work together to develop formulations that we think can be added to polyester to maintain durability and also make it biodegradable. And that was, that was really how we did it. You know, we looked at like 15 different formulations. And all along the way, we had to consider things like, Well, what, what spins into yarn effectively? Right? You can't have an inefficient urine spinning process, because that would drive cost up. No suppliers would ever work with us. So it had to be efficient spinning. We had to make sure that there was no dye about diabetes issues, durability issues,
Bret Schnitker 13:56
tensile strength, you had to maintain exactly.
Andrea Ferris 13:59
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we've had to do studies also to make sure that there's no unintended consequences of, say, a finished fabric that's been redeveloped with C cloud, we had to make sure that there was no additional microfiber shedding. I mean, it had to be just as durable. And then, of course, the biodegradation studies. So, you know, we again, we looked at like 15 different formulations through all these different processes, and it was really once we saw full biodegradation and third party lab studies, which was about three and a half years in a lab where the owners of the uniforms company said, Wow, this is this is amazing, what We've developed, and we should spin off a separate company, bringing this to market as a technology for the entire textiles industry. So we spun off a separate company around late 2016 and actually launched as the brand seaclo in 2017 so we've been in the market for a while. L. But really, where we spent our early days was building this infrastructure so that SQL is available through supply chains all around the world. So that
Emily Lane 15:10
means how quickly you actually accomplished it. I mean, this is a huge task.
Andrea Ferris 15:16
I will in R&D. It was about four years, okay, yeah, it's still coming. 12 to 2016.
Bret Schnitker 15:22
We have interviewed, we have talked to a number of different people about this subject. And there's all these people that are coming up with new versions of bio based poly or bio based synthetics. They they tout about this, but there's never been anything to scale. It's always been to your point, kind of conflicting with supply chain needs. It's just no one has ever come up with this. And the fact that you it, and I'm sure there were a lot of trial and error, but it seems like you picked exactly the right group of people to solve this, and for the purposes of today, you are a unicorn. I mean, this is not something that's, you know, you don't have a ton of competition out there. There's a lot of people out there that talk about different aspects, about how to reduce, you know, normal poly, but you've actually built it in pellet form to manage it at source, the competitors out there, there's been, there's nothing close at all that I've seen. I mean, there's people that may tout some solutions, but after you do a little bit more thorough study, you're not really sure whether they've got that fully baked or not yet.
Andrea Ferris 16:33
Yeah, this is true and and, you know, I do think that there are some really amazing materials coming to market, like these, bio based and biodegradable polyesters. PHA national renewable National Renewable Energy labs, NREL, are working with The North Face on some innovations around that. But to your point like, I can't even envision how long it's going to take for those things to actually scale and go beyond-
Bret Schnitker 17:02
That's the issue. When you ask them about how many metric tons, and you need millions of metric tons, they're talking about 10s of 1000s. You know, you've got all of these different groups, and maybe the war is won by a bunch of little troops on the ground doing it. But, you know, I believe that the issue is so large that it needs something that can be, you know, rolled out at scale quickly. You know, we've talked about in previous episodes that, you know, statistics are we're going to use the, I mean, this is a crazy conversation because it's physically impossible. There are people that we're going to use the resources of tours by 2025, and, you know, there's all these conversations right around the corner, yeah, yeah. There's all these conversations about, you know, things that are that are urgent. And, you know, we need an urgent answer. And, and again, I don't want it to sound like an advertisement for cclo, but it is an advertisement for Sikh law, because I want people to get on board here. You know, this is something that can change the world and move and move the needle quickly and in the absence of all these other things, other people figuring out something to do at scale. This is something that that every organization that is doing synthetic should be taking very seriously, thatwe don't have 5, 10, 15 years to sort this out, as I was traveling in Africa, and when rain would rain into these villages, and nothing would soak into the soil because the soil was so full of plastic, you know, that's not going away, that's not going to change. We need an urgent answer very, very quickly. And even when we were dialoguing with different bio based companies, you know that the natural conclusion that you that you have with almost all bio bases, oh, they're all biodegradable. I was shocked to find out when I asked, you know, asked, Well, tell me about the biodegradability. We haven't really sorted that out yet. So you're using natural bio based to create the equivalent of poly, but then you're repeating the same issue about biodegradability. Yet, once again, there was just a number of organizations that touted bio based but still hadn't managed the biodegradable issue. And of course, I brought up that you should partner with CiCLO if, if the chemistry would work out well enough that that's the additive. And you know, we just keep coming back to the urgency and the need, and you've got the solution. Why did you keep it? This is a tough question. Why did you keep it secret for so long, I feel like you've kept it
Andrea Ferris 19:43
I know you feel like that, but we actually have not kept it secret. We've really spent our time building out the global network of certified manufacturing partners. So those are polyester and nylon fiber and yarn manufacturers. I. Who can actually supply the CiCLO technology. And honestly, that that's not that easy, if you think about it. So here we are brand new company, and we want somebody to take this master badge that we've created and run it through their process. The only reason that people spoke to me in the beginning is because we had the McDonald's uniforms program behind us. You know, it's hard to get gigantic manufacturers of polyester to say, now I'm going to stop and I'm going to listen to you startup who doesn't have a customer yet and ruin my material. So, you know, it was really a matter of, like, getting these suppliers on board, and then even once you're proven as like, Okay, you're not going to gunk up my system. Okay, this works, but like then they say, well, I need the I need a customer. I want a small customer. I, you know, no one's running, you know, small amounts of fiber at a time. They need big customers. So we really had to be working kind of both ends of the supply chain, all the way from the manufacturers of polyester to the end brands, and that's where we've spent our time. So now, even though you think we've been keeping the secret, you know, we have large relationships. So it is used in, say, the McDonald's uniforms program, of course, which we created it for. But HANES Brands is also using it, and they did a big launch with Champion, which you can see that they're they're transitioning their polyesters over to it and and they're not capsule programs that we're looking at, because we have no business. If we have capsule programs with a bunch of different brands, we might have a great marketing story, but we have no business, and we would go out of it.
Bret Schnitker 21:33
And that's where today it's a bunch of little capsule programs. People are kind of ticking the box, and sustainability, it's not, it's not really turning the tide,
Andrea Ferris 21:42
yeah, and that was, I mean, that was just never our objective. From the beginning, we really said, like, let's figure out, how can we truly make the biggest impact in terms of sustainability when it comes to polyester? So, you know, we also work withTarget and so a lot of the relationships that we've built, I mean, these are enormous brands that we've been working with for many years on the vetting, and so they're, you know, doing all their own due diligence. I kind of joke sometimes Ifeel that we may be the most heavily vetted technology ever to hit the market. And every brand you know has their own kind of way that they want to do the vetting of it. But you know, we were really getting big commitments from large retailers to be able to move the needle and building the infrastructure behind it over over these years, and in 2025 we are coming out with some a nice new elevated brand, and you'll see more of us in the market. But you know, if you don't build the infrastructure to make it available everywhere. Again, it's just a pretty marketing story. And we see a lot of those.
Bret Schnitker 22:45
Yeah, you do, and I probably see the complexity but, but you know, the anxiousness of seeing this everywhere, ubiquitous everywhere, probably drives that conversation a little bit. And I know you well enough in our previous in our conversations to date, to know that some of this was also vetting on your part that it was so important to you. And I even saw you at the textile show that we were just at where you were. You were very conscious about what you said, how you said it, the details behind it, because we just launched a podcast this week, I believe, about the challenge with greenwashing and how everyone would rather just not put their toe in the water for fear of being called out by something imperfect. And you know, in the in the podcast and in my dialog about this journey to sustainability, just like our journey on industrialization, the journey of humankind, on the on the earth, it's messy, right? There's there's never a direct line. You don't go from nothing to something. There's always these kind of trial and errors. And we have to have some patience for organizations that sincerely try to move the needle on sustainability and realize that along that path there will be things that will not, will not come to fruition or not meet the overall requirements of sustainability to the way that people want to kind of perceive them and and we have to have this openness to say, look, as long as they're trying. There are people that are deceiving people intentionally to drive margin and profit. Those are the ones that you have to be very black and white on. But there's just this mass of people today that are so scared about stepping into this for fear of something not particularly working out real well, that, yeah, backlash, that, that that slowing our progress. And, you know, I think it's important that, that we give you the opportunity for you to kind of speak to the detail and the the the intentionality that you had along the path. Have to ensure that this, this is working the way that you are are talking about. Tell us a little bit about that.
Andrea Ferris 25:08
Yeah, absolutely, you know. And I would say, when it comes to the marketing of sustainable materials, we have been, we have been meeting with hundreds of brands over the last seven years, right? And I've actually seen a transition in the way people are thinking about marketing their products. When we first came to market, there were definitely brands who wanted to come out with some big statement around biodegradable synthetics, and they wanted to be able to label their products with biodegradable and and really just, you know, they really wanted definite answers. I want, I want to be able to say, this is 100% biodegradable in every environment, those kinds of things. And we'd say, Wait a second, we need to take a step back here. This is a solution for unintended pollution. We don't know where it's going to end up. We need to be careful about what actual claim we put on the end product, and that, I would say, hindered our growth in the beginning conservative claims, and it is completely different now. Now people are like, I want the most conservative claim. I want something that I feel comfortable putting on a tag. And it doesn't have to be some grandiose marketing message. I need it to be substantiated with testing and data on the back end. And, you know, marketing messaging is going through legal teams. I mean, sometimes legal teams of a dozen people to make sure that, like, yeah, we feel good about putting that on an end product. And that's how we handled it from the beginning. And I just gonna keep going back to like we were our own customer. So for instance, the claims that can go on an end product that's using a CiCLO polyester or nylon are really about the reduction of synthetic microfiber pollution in the environment, right? Because the benefit is, once it gets into the environment, we know that it can biodegrade just like wool would biodegrade in the environment, and that is the claim. And you know it, we took a lot of time in developing what is it that we wanted to say about our product?
Emily Lane 27:09
And I feel like, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.
Andrea Ferris 27:12
Yeah, no, no, go ahead.
Emily Lane 27:14
How did you go about testing the results?
Andrea Ferris 27:18
Yeah, so the way that we test for biodegradability is where we're using standard test methods that are developed by ASTM and ISO test methods that measure true biodegradation of materials in various environments. You know, we're choosing test methods that are simulating environments where these fibers that come off of our textiles end up as pollutants. So we're looking at Wastewater Treatment Plant sludge. I mentioned earlier that it's pretty well documented that fibers are coming off in the wash, they wind up at a wastewater treatment plant where they go into the sludge, and that sludge then is sometimes sent to landfill as a cover, sometimes it's incinerated, and about half the time, it's going to fields and used as fertilizer. So anything that's in there is going into the environment. So we're looking at wastewater sludge, we're looking at soil. Our soil is littered with these synthetic fibers, and then also sea water. So like natural sea water conditions, and then also anaerobic landfill conditions, and that would be like a biologically active landfill. So and landfill I might mention, sometimes people will say, well, nothing ever biodegrades in a landfill. And there are some landfills that are incredibly dry, and they are intended to be like tombs with no biodegradation. So if you have a wool sweater in one of those, it's not going to biodegrade. And if you have a CiCLO polyester in one of those, it's not going to biodegrade. But there are many landfill that are well managed also that biodegradation can occur. And in those well managed landfills, the gasses are captured and used for energy. Sometimes they're powering their own plants. Sometimes it's sold back to the grid. So that's, you know, another environment. So, so yeah, we do long term tests with third party labs. We use third party labs all over the world with these test methods, and we're always comparing a material made with CiCLO polyester or nylon compared to that same material without the CiCLO in it. So we can say, okay, all things equal? How does one compare to another? And you know, we actually do long term tests so we can see through to full bio degradation, and then have done additional teststo make sure that there's no micro plastics left over that maybe you can't see with the naked eye, but are there and so we can confirm no micro plastics as well.
Bret Schnitker 30:08
And you know that the big conversation, it's happening everywhere, micro plastics, but for many reasons, a lot of it, that there's been a lot of money invest in, it is the ocean, right? You know, the plastics and save our oceans and you know, all the big cleanups. What? What happens when we get micro CiCLO product that ends up in salt water? What is the biodegradability look like in salt water?
Andrea Ferris 30:35
Yeah, so in lab tests, we see that it biodegrades and about under four years compared to single digit biodegradation or none for that same material without CiCLO in it, so it can fully biodegrade in seawater. You know, the time it takes for something to biodegrade. And when I say something, I mean anything that's inherently biodegradable, whether it's a banana peel or cotton or wool or CiCLOpolyester varies based on lots of different environmental factors. So warmer environments will allow faster biodegradation of materials. Colder, for instance, will be longer biodegradation. But comparatively, we see about four years versus never. In these lab studies.
Bret Schnitker 31:23
So those that don't understand biodegradability and plastics, you know, we talk about micro particulates, I think people understand it's just little pieces getting smaller and smaller and smaller as they kind of break up. When we talk about biodegradability, what happens to CiCLO poly as it biodegrades. What does it turn into?
Andrea Ferris 31:45
Yeah, so microorganisms that live in these live in the environment, just naturally, are able to actually break down the molecular structure of the polyester, and then they digest it. And what does it turn into? So, microorganisms themselves, when they biodegrade anything, give off carbon dioxide, and then they also some of some of the material that you say that they're digesting, they're using to build their own cell walls, just like we when we eat food, it's not 100% in, 100% out, we're using some of it to build our own cell walls. So it turns into basically dead bug bodies. We can call it. So it's also called bio mass, so CO2, and bio mass just completely natural elements, just like when anything else that's natural biodegrades,
Bret Schnitker 32:32
that's wonderful, so
Emily Lane 32:33
fascinating.
Andrea Ferris 32:34
And we do get the question a lot like, oh, well, is this just disintegration? And that is not the case, it's not just splintering into smaller pieces.
Bret Schnitker 32:44
Thats the thing I wanted to make sure everyone is crystal clear about, in this case,
Emily Lane 32:50
what's next on the horizon for CiCLO?
Bret Schnitker 32:54
we've got poly and nylon covered. What's next?
Andrea Ferris 32:56
Yeah, we have poly and nylon covered. Well, you know, you mentioned earlier about bio based materials, which can be of bio origin, but not necessarily biodegradable. So we are working with some of our manufacturers on combining bio based nylon, for instance, with CiCLO, to have a fully bio based biodegradable product.
Bret Schnitker 33:16
Which is good reason, a good thing to do, right? Yeah,
Andrea Ferris 33:20
yeah. And then we're also working on some partnerships with textile to textile recyclers, so that as we're as the industry is transitioning to recycled textile inputs for these synthetics, they can be made, recycled with, CiCLO in it and still recyclable. And I actually think that that's kind of the Holy Grail, and I think we're gonna, it's gonna take years.
Bret Schnitker 33:48
Are you opening my Holy Grail comment, I'll see you-
Andrea Ferris 33:51
I am thats Holy Grail. But it really is, I think, you know, I mean, it's gonna take so many different solutions to solve these problems with synthetics, and, you know, certainly using textile inputs for our polyester and nylon fibers makes a whole lot of sense. 10 years ago, I didn't believe that we would ever get to that point. I really didn't, but now we have extended producer responsibility, and that's, you know, in Europe, but then it passed recently, also in California. What happens in California is going to happen throughout the rest of the country. We see really neat things happening, like the goodwill, collaborating with waste management and looking at that infrastructure, making sure we have the right sorting to be able to recycle our textiles appropriately, resale when it's appropriate, recycle when it's appropriate. And, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense to be doing that. So we have source reduction of virgin synthetics, so, so we're working on on all of those things. And I do think that that's also another benefit the CiCLO technology versus some of the other novel materials that are coming out is that it really works with any of the synthetics, no matter what the base polymer is,
Bret Schnitker 35:12
P, E, T. yeah. So everything, yeah, wonderful.
Emily Lane 35:19
just wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today and having the conversation of the Holy Grails, of the Holy Grails of our industry, right? The Grails. All the Grails. We welcome them all.
Andrea Ferris 35:32
Thanks for helping to spread the message about CiCLO. As you said, it's super important.
Emily Lane 35:38
We'll continue to do so. We also have our next issue of Clothing Coulture Magazine, ready to come out to market, and we have a article on CiCLO in that magazine. So for more information, you can take a look at that as well.
Bret Schnitker 35:53
For those people that are interested in getting access to CiCLO fabrics and the CiCLO conversation. How? How do you suggest they reach out?
Andrea Ferris 36:05
Yeah, so that they can reach out to me directly. So-
Bret Schnitker 36:09
We'll give her a personal cell phone number.
Andrea Ferris 36:11
I would give my personal email. You can also reach out to us through our website at ciclotextiles.com where there's a lot of information about the things I've covered here today and our testing, and also a way to contact us so that our our sales team can help build the right map of suppliers, so that any brand can really integrate this pretty easily into their own supply chains.
Emily Lane 36:37
We'll make sure to include that information in our show notes as well. Great well. Thank you for joining us today and thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to subscribe to stay apprised of upcoming episodes of Clothing Coulture.
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