May 16, 2022 · 28m · how-i-built-this
HIBT Lab! UNLESS Collective: Eric Liedtke
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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, former Adidas Global Brand President Eric Liedtke discusses the severe environmental hazards of synthetic fashion and explains how his startup, UNLESS Collective, is engineering 100 percent plant-based, fully compostable streetwear to disrupt the apparel industry.
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 33.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.8 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 0.4 Guy pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:08 Incumbents are complicit in throwaway culture
Liedtke rejects the premise of working through legacy brands, asserting that incumbent corporations are fundamentally complicit in the take-make-waste cycle.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 15:33 Questioning startup approach over corporate scaleRaz directly challenges Liedtke's decision to launch an unproven startup rather than using the massive global supply chains of industry giants to effect faster systemic change.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:40 FTC 100% cotton labeling loopholesLiedtke breaks down how regulatory labeling allows garments marked 100% cotton to feature synthetic sewing threads and polyester tags.
Guy holds their own ▶ 22:58 Interrogating manufacturing emissions and domestic feasibilityRaz demonstrates sharp operational understanding by pointing out that packaging, transport, and overseas manufacturing offset simple material sustainability.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Host Announcement: COVID Diagnosis and Episode Release Schedule | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Introductory monologue where Guy Raz shares his COVID diagnosis and provides background on Eric Liedtke's career at Adidas before founding Unless Collective. | |
| Revitalizing Adidas and Awakening to Fashion's Environmental Footprint | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz prompts Liedtke on his career turnaround at Adidas, allowing Liedtke to detail his epiphany regarding fast fashion and environmental impact. | |
| The Reality of Forever Plastics and Microplastic Pollution | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Raz shares personal anecdotes from visiting a recycling center and brings up health hazards; Liedtke explains forever plastics, municipal recycling limitations, and microplastic toxicity. | |
| Phasing Out Virgin Polyester and Venturing into Plastic-Free Apparel | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Raz questions the feasibility of phasing out virgin polyester by 2024 and admits personal reliance on synthetic apparel. | |
| The UNLESS Mission: Creating Truly Compostable Plant-Based Clothing | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Liedtke outlines the waste crisis of unsold clothing while Raz synthesizes the premise into the core idea of completely compostable plant-based clothing. | |
| Disrupting Incumbents: Why True Sustainability Requires New Startups | 4 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Raz challenges Liedtke on why he started a small brand from scratch instead of leveraging the scale of corporate giants like Adidas; Liedtke draws a comparison to Tesla forcing change onto automotive incumbents. | |
| Engineering Zero-Plastic Garments: From Cellulose Fibers to Natural Inks | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Liedtke educates Raz on greenwashing loopholes in labeling, explaining that 100% cotton garments routinely use polyester threads and plastic tags. | |
| Global Supply Chain Challenges and Rebuilding Domestic Textile Milling | 4 | 3 | 0 | 2 | Raz questions domestic manufacturing limitations and probes brand vision; Liedtke details the overseas milling bottlenecks and his philosophy of seamless sustainable design. |
Statements from this episode (12)
Liedtke: Adidas shares traded around $50 at its brand turnaround low
“The brand had fallen to, you know its lowest level in years. It was down, its share price was trading in the 50 dollar range.”
Liedtke: Every piece of plastic ever created still exists on Earth
“What I like to term is, plastic is a forever material, which means there's not a piece of plastic that's ever been created that's not still with us today in some shape or form.”
Liedtke: 60% to 70% of modern fashion is made from polyester
“In the fashion space you've got, you know, arguably 60 to 70% depending on what brand and what Performance features you're looking for are made out of polyester, which is a form of plastic”
Liedtke: Humans ingest roughly a credit card worth of microplastics weekly
“You could argue that microplastics you're eating based upon your diet, you're eating about a credit card worth of microplastics a week.”
Liedtke: Studies show babies have twice the microplastics of adults
“What they're finding is double the amounts in our babies because when they check their feces, they're finding double amount of microplastic penetration in their children, in their babies, than they are in adults”
Liedtke: 60% to 70% of Adidas products were polyester-based
“When I was at Adi, we were right in that frame of 60 to 70% of our product being polyester based.”
Liedtke: Adidas may eliminate virgin polyester ahead of 2024 target
“From what I hear and what I read from what Adidas is still doing is they're honoring that, that target, and they may even exceed that and hit, hit it in an earlier timeframe.”
Liedtke: 40% of exported discarded clothing goes straight to waste
“So, 40% is, is estimated to be unusable.
So, it goes immediately into
Landfills, which I'm sure are leaching into the oceans and are being burned.
So it goes right into the air, right into the ground, right into the water.
The other 60%, I guess, is being sol…”
Liedtke: FTC rules allow '100% cotton' clothing to contain hidden plastic components
“A hundred percent Cotton shirt that's labeled a hundred percent cotton doesn't have to be a hundred percent cotton because the guidelines were not set from a sustainability standpoint. They were set from a federal trade commission's standpoint, and it was all …”
Liedtke: Nearly 100% of clothing brand labels are polyester
“Every company that puts labels on theirs, on their product, but almost a hundred percent of them are petroleum based or polyester.”
Liedtke: US apparel manufacturing requires milling domestic cotton in Korea
“Cotton is the cotton we're sourcing for our cut and sew is grown in North Carolina. It is then unfortunately having to ship to Korea to be milled because there's no more mills in America. And then it's brought back to America where we can do the cut and sew an…”
Liedtke: Sustainable fashion cannot scale if consumers must compromise on aesthetics
“Because I think ultimately the consumer doesn't want to compromise their tastes for their values. And I think that's where we need to get to in fashion is you need to have that quality of design and that quality of desirability in your product that is second t…”