Australian enviro-tech start-up Samsara Eco has partnered with global athletic apparel brand lululemon towards sustainability in textiles.
Under this new partnership, Samsara Eco will create the world’s first infinitely recycled nylon 6,6 and polyester which will be used for lululemon’s product line. Together, the two companies will create new recycled nylon and polyester made from apparel waste, bringing to life lower-impact alternatives to important materials in the performance apparel industry.
This innovation comes as it was estimated that around 87 per cent of discarded textiles either end up in landfill, incinerated or leak into the environment because there had been no method of recycling it until now.
Samsara Eco’s new technology now makes it possible to break down mixed apparel derived from plastic to its core molecules, which can then be used to recreate brand-new apparel again and again.
“We’re proud that this partnership is disrupting the apparel industry,” Paul Riley, CEO and Founder of Samsara Eco (pictured), said. “The ability to infinitely recycle textiles, including nylon, is an essential solution to tackle the enormous challenge of textile waste in the apparel industry.
“Together with Lululemon, Samara Eco is creating enzymatically recycled nylon and accelerating textile-to-textile recycling toward truly circular apparel. This is a massive milestone as Samsara Eco achieves an environmentally friendly ability to recycle blended textiles including nylon and polyester,” Riley added.
“Nylon remains our biggest opportunity to achieve our 2030 sustainable product goals. This partnership demonstrates what’s possible through collective innovation to solve unmet needs,” Yogendra Dandapure, Vice President of Raw Materials Innovation at lululemon, said.
“Through Samsara Eco’s patented enzymatic process, we’re advancing transforming apparel waste into high-quality nylon and polyester, which will help us live into our end-to-end vision of circularity,” Dandapure added.
The partnership is lululemon’s first minority investment in a recycling company, and Samsara Eco’s inaugural partnership within the apparel industry. Samsara Eco hopes that the new partnership will bring them closer to the goal of recycling 1.5 million tonnes of plastic annually by 2030.
This story was originally published on Inside Small Business.
