Thousand Fell aimed to create a sustainable sneaker brand by offering discounts for returning old shoes to be recycled, but found the process too expensive. SuperCircle developed a digital system to more efficiently collect and sort used clothes by brand for recycling partners based on material composition data, reducing costs and manual sorting. By tagging each shipment, SuperCircle ensures traceability and sends bales of garments to various recycling partners in the US, Europe, and Latin America.

1. The Hunt for an
Easy Way to
Recycle Old
Clothes
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2. In recent years, environmental activists have been going on about
why fashion brands need to be in on saving the planet.
They've been propagating for brands to refocus on creating
products that are easily recycled, remanufactured and resold. But
more importantly, minimizing their use of new resources.
And not much seems to have happened.
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3. But while there are many brands trying to save piles of clothes
from going to the landfills, one brand seems to be making great
strides.
Thousand Fell launched in 2019 with a line of sustainably sourced
and recyclable sneakers. They created a system where buyers
return shoes to be recycled and receive a discount on their next
pair.
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4. Their founders Chloe Songer and Stuart Alum wanted to prove
that their shoes could be recycled over and over again – and still
turn a profit.
But It turned out to be even harder than they thought because
turning old sneakers back into new sneakers is expensive; it’s
cost-prohibitive and not scalable.
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5. ISome brands have put return schemes in place but many of their
outputs are of such poor quality that they simply end up in a
landfill.
Also, sorting seems to be a big concern too. Determining which
discarded clothes should go where is a mostly manual and costly
process, followed by the extra work of removing things like
zippers and buttons.
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6. Which means items can't be shipped one at a time.
Thousand fell was shipping a single pair of sneakers from a
buyer's house to a recycler for $13 and paid an extra $7 for each
set to be recycled. It simply wasn't profitable as expected.
And the dream of reducing emissions from fashion items was
again bleak …
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7. SuperCircle's approach was to digitize the process as much as
possible. It started off by supporting garment return schemes and
connecting to their return process to remove stock that cannot be
resold to recycling partners.
In turn, they offer tracking for brands about where their old
clothes end up and data on the corresponding environmental
savings.
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8. IIf the original purchase was made online, it only makes sense that
these stores have user information.
SuperCircle sync with users’ order history to get more detailed
information about each product. They collect material composition
data for each item in order to reduce the need for manual sorting.
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9. Each shipment is then tagged to make it easy to get to the right destination and
ensure brand traceability.
The company has 12 different recycling partners in the US and several in Europe
and Latin America where they send bales of garbage collected from customers
about once a month or once a quarter, depending on the volumes.
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10. In recent years, environmental activists have been going on about
why fashion brands need to be in on saving the planet.
They've been propagating for brands to refocus on creating
products that are easily recycled, remanufactured and resold. But
more importantly, minimizing their use of new resources.
And not much seems to have happened.
www.flawlessmagazine.com Page 10 0f 10