Circular fashion company remakes Danville's old story with textiles again

Danville was once defined by textiles and tobacco. Although its recent renaissance means the city is now home to a wider variety of businesses, a fashion tech startup is taking on both of its classic sectors.

Circ is a so-called circular fashion company that recycles textile waste into new fibers with the aim of reducing the industry's impact on the planet.

Its presence in Danville, which began because of the city's history with the tobacco industry, today is helping to redefine the city's relationship with textiles, which runs equally deep.

Dan River Mills was at one time the largest textile company in the South and the main driver of Danville's economy for decades. When it closed in 2006, thousands lost their jobs and the city entered an era of economic distress.

Since then, Danville has been working to rebuild its economy and focus on growth and has been largely successful so far.

Although it creates fabric in an entirely different way, Circ builds on the legacy of Dan River Mills, said Taylor Greene, Circ's manager of corporate development and sustainability.

Dan River Mills was home to a lot of really interesting textile innovations in the '60s and '70s, Greene said. Danville was then changing the game for textiles. Now it's cool to have the opportunity to create another type of revolutionary technology.

The company grew out of a Danville-based biofuel startup in 2011 and received a grant from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission to use tobacco as a biofuel.

Eventually, this work expanded into the field of fashion technology, and the company now recycles textile waste into new fibers with the aim of protecting the planet from the cost of clothing, its website said.

If we keep doing what we've always done in fashion, we'll have lots of clothes to wear but no Earth to wear them on, the website says.

According to a report According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which works to promote a circular economy, the average item of clothing is only worn seven to ten times before it is thrown away. And today's consumers buy 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago, which both creates more textile waste and requires more textile production each year than the year before.

A Study 2021 The World Economic Forum has established that the fashion industry, along with its supply chain, is the third largest polluting industry in the world, releasing 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year.

In response, companies prioritizing circular fashion and slow fashion have sprung up with the aim of changing the way the world consumes clothing.

Circ operates in the circular fashion sector, which Greene described as a sister to slow fashion.

Both industries are battling fast fashion, a term that refers to the mass production of clothing at lower costs, often in factories where employees are not paid a living wage or protected by fair labor practices. in response to ephemeral trends.

And because they're made and sold cheaply, fast fashion clothing doesn't last very long, leading consumers to throw it away and buy more.

Slow fashion, on the other hand, describes an approach that is more environmentally friendly and takes more time, which results in better quality items.

And circular fashion refers to the effort to keep already created materials in circulation, rather than sending them to a landfill at the end of their lifespan, Greene said.

Circ does this by recycling polyester and cotton blend fabrics.

The majority of what we wear today is not what we call mono-material. It's not just one thing, Greene said. If you're shopping these days and you look at a label, it will contain two, three types of fiber, or sometimes more.

Circ scientists have discovered how to separate polyester and cotton blends, which make up the vast majority of blended fabrics, on a chemical level.

Currently, the textile waste that triggers this process comes from post-industrial sources, Greene said, such as cutting waste that may not even look like clothing.

Once the polyester and cotton are separated, Circ takes these building blocks and regenerates them into polyester and cellulose-based fibers for reuse, Greene said.

It's a hydrothermal process, she said.

Basically we were able to use water pressure, temperature and a little chemistry. Our reactor acts like a sophisticated pressure cooker and the polyester's polymer chain breaks, she said. Then we basically rebuilt those basic elements.

The patented process transforms polyester fibers into liquid, separating them from cotton fibers. The polyester is preserved without attacking the cotton, thus allowing the two materials to be reused in the production of new textiles.

Circ is the only manufacturer to successfully sort mixed textile waste into polycotton, a process that involves far fewer carbon emissions than traditional textile production.

There are other players in the circular fashion space, Greene said, but they primarily focus on recovering single fibers from just cotton or polyester, while Circ focuses on mixed materials.

And because they are made from recycled raw materials, Circs fabrics are also recyclable at the end of their life.

The implications of this technology are even greater when you think about the massive reach of the textile industry, Greene said.

Everyone wears clothes, but [the industry] It's also every rug ever made, the bedding in every hotel you've ever slept in, every towel you've used at a water park, she said. When you start to think about the scope of textiles, it’s gigantic.

Weaving together the many strands of the industry

Once Circ produces the fabric, the process remains complicated because the fashion industry's supply chain is very disconnected, Greene said.

Perhaps the cotton is grown in India, then shipped to Vietnam to be processed, then shipped to Bangladesh to be spun, then sent to South Korea to be made into fabric, Greene said. It is important for us to dialogue with all the players in this chain, especially as we are introducing a new innovative material.

Circ communicates with clothing brands as well as their suppliers, she said. These brands include big names from across the spectrum of the fashion industry, from sustainable brands to fast fashion.

Patagonia, known for its commitment to sustainability and responsible fashion, was an early investor in Circ.

And Zara, a fast fashion retailer, partnered with Circ for its first commercial launch to create a small collection of clothing made with the company's recycling technology. Zara's parent company Inditex has also invested in Circ, according to a Article from Vogue Business on the collection.

The items in this collection, launching in April 2023, are the first, to our knowledge, globally, circular products made from polycotton waste, Circ founder Peter Majeranowski said in the article .

The article also highlights Zara's reputation as a fast fashion retailer and questions the scale of the impact its partnership with Circ will have.

It's hard to see how a single capsule collection will change the overall impact of one of the largest fast fashion companies on the planet, or its business model that relies on continued growth in production and sales, says the article. However, this changes the situation on what can be expected from the speed with which fashion companies source materials and opens up the possibility of managing the end of life of clothing more responsibly and sustainably than standard current.

And in October 2023, designer brand Mara Hoffman launched The Dress that Changes Everything, the first luxury garment made from Circs recycled lyocell. The floor-length column dress is now sold online for $1,195.

Mara Hoffman has also committed to transitioning all lyocell in its products to Circ lyocell over the next three years.

Circ was recognized this year as one of 15 finalists for the Earthshot Prize, an environmental prize founded in 2020 by Prince William, which aims to discover and help scale innovative environmental solutions. There were more than 1,100 nominations across the world this year.

Although Circ is not one of the five prize winners, as a finalist it will benefit from the mentorship, resources and technical support of the Earthshot Prize Fellowship program, including access to a network of companies, d investors and climate experts.

Circ set a goal of being nominated for this award when it was announced in 2020 and was proud to achieve that goal in such a short time, Greene said.

It was a great honor and helped raise awareness of Circ even more, she said.

In terms of scale, Circ is in pilot operations and the company is currently working to build its first large-scale industrial facility, which likely will not be located in the United States, Greene said.

But Circ will still have a presence in Danville, she said. Half of Circs' 50 employees live in Danville or just across the border in North Carolina.

Dan River and other area textile mills helped propel different types of materials and innovations in finishing and objects that we still use today, Greene said. The overall system is a little broken because we produce a lot and a lot of it is synthetic, with these different finishing chemicals that have environmental and social implications. To be able to rewrite this in a way that is better for the planet and its people is truly special.

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