Opinion
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…”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Assertion Supported
Less than one percent of clothing is recycled globally
“Less than one percent.”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Supported
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…”
Disclosure
Circ raised approximately $50 million over the past year
“In the last year alone, we've raised about fifty million.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
