"Share with us your background and journey into the fashion world."

“When I was in college in Pittsburgh, I started off as an Electrical Engineering Major at Carnegie Mellon University and realized I didn’t like it that much. My Sophomore year, I got put on Intel’s new fashion division which was surprising to me but here we were. I got to do some pretty cool projects! We had done this projecting belt that was on the Paris fashion show, also this electronic butterfly dress that was on a Netflix show. Most of the work was the application of the engineering, how to 3D print the belt, make sure the heat doesn’t dissipate, and be able to have a leather belt hold mechanical pieces. For the butterfly dress we had a muscle wire to make the butterflies move, and showed me that you can mix engineering with textiles.”

“What I realized is that not many engineers were actually working in this space, and so the next 4 years were dedicated to research and tons of projects. One of the projects was this loom design we did at CMU that we could mass produce for under $30. I also participated in the Lunar Gala at CMU, the largest student-run fashion show in Pittsburgh, where we focused on applications on a garment, so there was the consistent application of my engineering background on the fashion/textile industry in school”

"What inspired your solution to the problem, and what are the origins of your team?"

“After going through this process, I got into this weird world of textiles and engineering and started wondering - where is there a niche that I could do some good? How could I find a solution for a problem in the fashion space using the background I had? Textile waste is one that everyone has been talking about for a while with 93 million tons of textile waste produced each year, with less than 1% recycled annually. We realized this is a materials problem, which in turn is an engineering problem. Tushita's, one of my closest friends at CMU, capstone was on trash sorting. This collaboration made so much sense to us and pulled in Ida who had a background in Environmental engineering background, and business so we were all bringing different strengths and decided to pursue this problem after working together in grad school.”

"As a women-led organization, how have you navigated approaching investors and larger brands with your technology?"

“It’s interesting, there have been challenges but all three of us are engineers so it’s not unusual for us to be with a lot of dudes. At the beginning, we got a lot of attention because we are three female founders. Last year it was more of a struggle when we were trying to raise money, as many people didn’t take us seriously. And that’s because what we’re trying to do is very risky. It requires a lot of hardware and different components, we’re trying to solve a problem that doesn't have a good solution, which means things are wide open but also there is the question of Why You. Now that we have the right funding and support, the fact that we’re three women engineers has really helped because people are realizing we’re different. Different is always good in entrepreneurship, which has been positive for us.”

"Did you always want to start your own company, and did you ever see it being within the fashion/textile industry?"

“I definitely wanted to start my own business when I was younger, but fashion has come into my life from college. I didn’t grow up sewing since I was 5, and once I got introduced to it through Intel I could see the application. It’s really reflective of the tech industry today since everything is cross-disciplinary right now. As long as we’re open to that, we can see that there’s so much underdeveloped work today. The fashion industry in a lot of tech realms is behind, and especially in textiles, there is a lot that needs to be done. We could do textile waste sorting, and chemical waste reprocessing. All of these would be good solutions just because there really hasn’t been development.”

"How is Refiberd. different from your competitors in providing something the world needs?"

“Right now Refiberd’s approach to textile waste is that. Current textile recyclers haven’t been able to scale their technologies because they don’t have a well sorted supply of textile waste. You need to understand material to a level to not break down your process and get a decent amount of efficiency to make this somewhat commercializable. Right now it all comes in a bucket, and it’s a random assortment of items people have donated. For us, if we can do the sorting of textile waste and having our own chemical process we are starting with a guaranteed supply and we are processing it for our own chemical process. After our process finishes, we end up with thread. We can’t just be a sorting company because there aren’t enough organizations to sell this to. The exciting thing is that we can one day have a good customer for the textile waste and can give them exactly what they need.”

“We know there are hundreds of thousands of samples in the world of all textiles and quality. We know we won’t make all of them, but we can supply waste to all of them. That way we can help other things grow so we can tackle this holistically. Material texture matters so much to designers, which allows us to grow from it.”

“There are old recycling techniques that need good supplies for cheaper. And now manual sorting is so inaccurate that it is essentially unusable and dangerous for people working on it. If we can lean in to mechanical recycling or other aspects that really need reform we can help out. On the other end the fashion industry is willing to push us out for the first time and are excited about the recycling aspect. This is a purchasing push by brands which is definitely a heavy motivator. We’re excited to see the development in space over the next 5 years.”

“Suppose we take polyester, right? There’s a simple type of polyester recycling where we melt down the polyester and turn it into a thread called melt extrusion. If even 1% of cotton enters that process, it’ll clog the machine and stop the process for the day. The sorting process is the side that brands don’t have to see at all. By doing spectroscopy and image processing we can get good accuracy to do detection on the elements and remove contaminants. Manual detection just can’t get the same accuracy, and is tough to identify all the elements.”

"How will you scale this technology to help the greater community?"

“In other countries people are walking through textile waste at work because the recycling of the waste isn’t a priority. If we can remove the issue of textile waste, we can encourage the movement of jobs towards more efficient ways of recycling and increasing quality of life.”

"Where do you see Refiberd in 5 years?"

“In order to get to the fashion industry’s goal of local textile production, we need local access of raw materials, a local means of raw production, and localized distribution. When we have things like amazon that has proved us that we can do localized distribution now. The local means of production - When we start to see more automation in this space, when we talk about the bulk of production (such as cheaper, mass-produced fashion) you don’t need any custom work there, so we can definitely impact this industry. Refiberd really comes into the local access of raw materials. There’s textile waste everywhere, if we can have a Refiberd. factories near every hub of production we can use the area's textile waste, and then the transportation is nothing since we’ll be at the source. This could open up a textile economy in the US, and we could do so much around the world globally. This could be repeatable and accessible, and especially for cheaper clothing that we know don’t last as long. Recycled items will never be as good as the original, and that’s ok. Given that the cheaper spectrum where clothes last less anyway, we can expand the lifespan of the material we get.” 

"What sustainability efforts could readers make normally? And what’s your perspective on the messaging today regarding sustainability?"

“Brand awareness is always good, and if we can afford it buying higher quality garments. But that’s not realistic for most people. Not everyone can wear $200+ shirts because it’s not economically feasible. Re-using what you can, and extending the life cycle as much as you can. As long as we bolster these reuse systems, it also helps textile recyclers as they start to build up now because we will always have supply. For good will or any other donation center for example, all items that don’t get sold after 4 weeks gets packed for textile donation facilities that can be sent to us. As long as we bolster that economy, it really helps us textile recyclers. I would actually say don’t stress too much about it, right now the messaging for sustainability efforts falls on the consumer when it really shouldn’t. Around 80% of this problem falls on the business side, causing a lot of guilt on consumers. Not saying these efforts aren’t useful, but it’s a lot of effort we’re sending for the wrong problem. We need to keep pressure on brands, and come up with cost effective solutions that can solve the other portion of this. It’s good to see more people are performing research on this topic!”