Material Transformation is not new. As the Footwear & Fashion industry has prided themselves into counting the number of bottles they have turned into fibers and ultimately into garments and shoes – this is Materials Transformation at its finest.
At ReCircled we have been on a quest to help reframe the conversation around processes that are available to us today. The issue of “waste” in our industry is not improving. The path we headed down to solve the problem has not worked. With new laws and regulations being put in place around the world, we get the sense desperation is setting in, real solutions are far and few between.
Upon reflection, like most issues that we try to solve, we went after the low hanging fruit. Like any other industry the big problem with Fashion Waste has been avoided. It is a messy, dirty, contaminated problem. It is a problem of mixed materials, coatings, chemicals, glues and really nasty stuff. Imagine the day the BIG problem is solved.
With reframing the conversation to one of Material Transformation and not necessarily the framework that has been laid out – we have found and continue to find solutions to the BIG MIXED MATERIAL issue!
Material Transformation can mean many things. At ReCircled we still believe there is an opportunity to HARVEST content and materials using our TPV (Time, Purity, Value) equation. We have found and are developing the technology to get the Time to harvest to a minimum and to maximize the Purity levels we can achieve. In the coming weeks we will show videos of how this is being achieved. Like all recycling processes, we know that to achieve X2X we need clean, pure streams of materials. We also know that for the foreseeable future the ”value” will not be monetarily, it will need do come from PR or Goodwill.
The BIG breakthrough in Material Transformation came from looking at technology used by other industries. In the past year we have learned about and are developing Pyrolysis and HTL (Hydrothermal Liquefaction) that allows us to Transform ALL waste into valuable products. The really great news, these are self-sustaining processes – we don’t need to sit around and wait with our hands out for politicians to give us money to support the process!
The Material Transformation process, Harvesting, Pyrolysis and HTL are not capital light businesses. However, they are businesses that can sustain themselves, there is a business case to be made and is something that is scalable today.
Want to learn more about these processes – just head to our Youtube channel. In the coming weeks additional Videos will be uploaded for informational purposes.
