Sep 7, 2023 · 29m · how-i-built-this
Threading the future of circular fashion with Peter Majeranowski of Circ
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This Lab, Guy Raz interviews Peter Majeranowski, co-founder and CEO of Circ, detailing how the company pivoted from tobacco biofuels to develop a revolutionary hydrothermal recycling technology that separates blended polycotton textiles and partners with global fashion brands to build a circular apparel economy.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 46.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 5.2 Guest disagreement 0.0 Guy pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:18 Rejecting the idea that they immediately recognized market need
In a very collegial interview, Peter's mildest pushback against an assumption is clarifying that they didn't know textile recycling was a massive problem at first and were simply throwing spaghetti at the wall to survive.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 20:49 Guy challenges Circ's collection and sourcing feasibilityGuy points out that raw textile collection resembles an entirely different business model like TerraCycle and asks how Circ expects to secure feedstock without overextending.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:27 Explaining the chemical separation of polycottonPeter explains the chemical breakdown process to Guy, detailing how reversing polyester polymerization dissolves it in water to isolate solid cotton cellulose.
Guy holds their own ▶ 8:07 Guy maps hydrothermal processing to nature's fuel timelineGuy synthesizes Peter's technical description into an insightful metaphor about mechanically recreating millions of years of geothermal energy compression.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emerging Markets in Eastern Europe and MBA Studies | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Guy guides the conversation smoothly through Peter's background in the Navy, venture work in Eastern Europe, and the initial pivot to tobacco biofuel. Guy shows solid technical intuition when he synthesizes the hydrothermal process as mechanically accelerating fossil fuel creation. | |
| Biofuel Bust, Paper Trials, and the Textile Pivot | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Peter explains the collapse of the biofuel venture market and the pivot toward pulp and paper, which led to their first textile experiment. Guy asks relevant questions about funding mechanisms and Virginia Tobacco Commission grants. | |
| Mid-Episode Station Break and Upcoming Segment Teaser | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Following the mid-roll break, Guy quotes industry statistics on fashion wastewater and carbon footprint. Peter details the early inbound interest from Patagonia regarding warehouse stockpiles of unusable garments. | |
| Chemical Breakdown and the Closed-Loop Water System | 6 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Guy presses Peter on the environmental footprint of the recycling process itself, citing the water and bleach required in cloth diaper laundering. Peter explains how chemical engineering allows Circ to recover 90% of water and infinitely repolymerize polyester. | |
| Second Station Break and Scaling Discussion Preview | 6 | 5 | 0 | 2 | Guy raises a realistic operational challenge, contrasting Circ's core processing with logistics/collection models like TerraCycle. Peter clarifies that Circ aggregates pre-consumer factory waste and institutional uniform streams rather than building a household collection system. | |
| Industry Partnerships, Consumer Awareness, and Future Vision | 5 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Guy questions whether recycled fiber truly solves fashion's footprint given dyeing, wastewater, and overconsumption. Peter agrees and provides a detailed historical analogy to the rapid scale-up of paper recycling to illustrate how textile circularity can mature. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Circ funded early R&D with millions in Virginia Tobacco Commission grants
“We did have some investment from individuals high net worth individuals, and we had millions of dollars of grants from the Virginia Tobacco Commission, for example.”
About 300 million trees are harvested annually for clothing pulp
“It turns out the highest or one of the highest qualities of pulp or cellulose goes into clothing, about three hundred million trees a year.”
Patagonia cold-called Circ to recycle warehouses of unrepairable used garments
“One of our first cold calls was from Patagonia, and they have a take-back program where you can come in with a Patagonia garment that's used, it doesn't matter how old, it'll give you some value for it, and then they try to resell it. Or they'll even try to re…”
Polyester can be chemically unpolymerized and repolymerized almost infinitely
“Whenever you have a chemical engineering process, you always have a little bit of loss from just material handling and things like that, but the polyester can get repolymerized and unpolymerized, you know, back and forth, essentially infinitely.”
Circ recycles over 90 percent of its hydrothermal process water
“It does, but we recycle over 90% of it back into the beginning of the process.”
Existing discarded clothing could supply all future garment manufacturing needs
“We believe we have all the clothes we need to make all the clothes we'll ever need, and when you look at the scale of this industry, it's massive, and a lot of it ends up in landfill within a year or two, and so there's a lot of material there that is in a lin…”
Manufacturing a shirt generates roughly an extra shirt's worth of waste
“To make a shirt. It takes about another shirt worth of waste along that whole supply chain to produce it. And most of it is that that final step when you're cutting patterns.
[1197] Guy Raz: Discarding, just discarding the textiles from what you're not using t…”
Circ raised approximately $50 million over the past year
“In the last year alone, we've raised about fifty million.”
Circ is planning its first facility to process 65,000 tons annually
“The bulk of the funds we've recently raised are going towards the engineering and planning for our first
[1374] Peter Majeranowski: Really large-scale integrated facility, and that would process about 65,000 tons per year.”
Circ's continuous textile recycling process takes about 15 minutes end-to-end
“From, and it's a continuous process too, so we're now doing it in a continuous way, but the, from end to end, it's about 15 minutes.”
Zara and Circ released the first polycotton waste clothing collection
“It was a four-piece collection we released back in May during Design Week in Milan. It was the world's first collection made from polycotton waste.”
Circ was Zara parent company Inditex's first-ever technology investment
“We were their first technology investment, and they've been fantastic partners to work with.”
Zara parent Inditex targeted 40 percent recycled materials for its clothing
“Yeah, well, in the text, the parent of Zara just put out their targets where they want to have 40% of their clothing made from recycled sources, an additional 25% from next generation materials, which we would fall in both categories.”