Upcycling Gives Excess Clothing Fabric a Second Chance
TerraCycle Include USA Scott
As global director of product at Royal Robbins, Scott Hamlin was responsible for eliminating the outdoor-clothing company's "fabric liability" -- mountains of surplus cloth. "It wasn't quite enough to make a production run, and it was more than what was conscionable to just throw away," he says. "So we would write the check to the textile factory and the factory would take over from there, and nobody ever asked where that fabric went."
He knew, though, that much of it would end up in landfills. So did his industry peers Gary Peck and Jim Stutts. So last year, the three joined forces to launch a company to "upcycle" excess fabric into hip apparel for outdoor enthusiasts. TerraCycle pushed upcycling into the consumer lexicon by making new products out of post-consumer packaging. Looptworks -- the name is a take on closed-loop, zero-waste manufacturing -- is among a new wave of startups that are tackling the other end of the garbage problem: pre-consumer waste.