Episode 42 – Repurposing Textiles: Prudential and Ambercycle Team Up

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats, and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

Hi. I’m Jason Risley, and we’re back with another episode of the Linen, Uniform and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA. On today’s episode, we’ll hear about an innovative partnership between Prudential Overall Supply and Amber Cycle. Chris Welch, the president of Prudential, discusses the company’s commitment to sustainability through its Clean Green Certification and how its focus on eco friendly practices led to its recent collaboration with Ambercycle, a company committed to recycling textile goods. Let’s hear more from Chris and Ambercycle CEO, Shay Suthi, about the partnership.

 

Certainly in the laundry, reusable textile space, by our very nature, we’re circular. Right? We always want to bring that product back. We want products that last a long time and we can use over and over again, continue to look good, have high quality sustainability, if for no other reason, again, just for a business purpose. And as more and more of the fabrics have become synthetic and obviously polyester being the dominant form there, cotton is going to biodegrade.

 

And if you put it in the landfill, it’ll eventually it’ll go away. Right. That’s a true recyclable product or full circle product. But polyester isn’t. It’s going to be there forever.

 

So we were very excited when when Shay and Amber Cycle reached out to us and talked about their process and what they’re working on. And so we’re happy to partner with them. So a little bit about Prudential. Obviously, the United States, we’re generally a little bit behind, sometimes a lot of bit behind where our European and some of our international partners are. Prudential was very happy to work with TRSA to establish a clean green certified level of producing and performing laundry.

 

It is a it’s a claim that’s backed up with data and measurement, and how do we show that? So it’s something that has been a big plus. It’s something that companies that are are really doing the right thing or or wanna do more of the right thing can push to and lean into to really have something they can feel proud of and give to their employees and also to the customers and the communities that they serve. Again, we talked about the natural circularity of the business when we talk to customers or people that use on premise laundry that maybe don’t use a laundry service, what the difference is between if you’re doing a home laundry system versus if you’re using obviously a much larger washing machine and dryers. A lot of efficiencies there to be gained.

 

And again, just by the nature of our process, it’s much greener than doing it in a small batch. One of the things that’s also a benefit to the communities we serve That really is, for us, a challenge, right, is that the environmental waste stream, where does that go? So when you bring it to a laundry, it’s in one space. It’s very easy for governmental and administrative agencies to come in and and assess how a company is doing. And so the plus is for the community, that it’s really one stop shopping, And you can see what’s happening versus having to go to 15, 20, 30 different smaller locations and try and chase that down.

 

Lot of miles to be driven, very little. Even here in Southern California, we’re we’re based out of our corporate offices are. Things seem close, but there’s an awful lot of cars out there. And so how do we, how do we reduce our our carbon footprint and make sure, that we’re doing our part? And, obviously, part of that is the business reason.

 

Everyone wants to spend less money on on gasoline or petrol and less on maintenance and tires and everything else. But, certainly, the other part is we wanna be a responsible business partner to the communities that we service and make sure they, you know, we’re paying this forward to the next generation of people that will use our service and participate in our business. So the opportunity with Shave that really presented itself is we have about 90% of our garments flow through a centralized distribution system, here in Southern California. So we’re able to capture, the 200 +1000000000 of revenue. And all those garments have really one big spot that we can see them, touch them, use them.

 

And so the challenge there is, as you all get, is that at some point, regardless of how well we maintain and how nice the customer is and how, you know, how gently we wash and process the garments, eventually they wear out and there’s no more useful life for them. And then what do you do with them? And so unfortunately, until we heard from Shade, really most of our product was either sold out in a rag out situation. So someone was using that one last time before it ended up in a landfill. Or even worse, it was just going straight to the landfill.

 

So it was very exciting, when Shay and Amber Cycle reached out to us and talked about their process and what the opportunity was for us really to have another natural step where we could donate or give or or repurpose that product one last time, and really to get it back to that full circle of use and and, right, again, make a a new product that could be used again and over and over and over again. Now for a brief message from TRSA. Looking to do better by your customers, your business, and the planet? Two words, clean green. Using a clean green certified company to process linens, uniforms, mats, and other reusable textiles assures a business that its laundry maximizes sustainability and has the smallest carbon footprint possible.

 

From sorting to delivery, CleanGreen certified operations meet quality standards for effectiveness and conserving resources and minimizing environmental impact. Their large scale washing, drying, and ironing technology is highly cost effective. Washers are programmed to minimize water, energy, and chemicals. Water from rinses is reused. Solid and liquid removal techniques clean drained water before it has back into the environment.

 

And incoming water is warmed using heat recaptured from drained water reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Other sustainable practices used by clean green launderers include solar energy and energy efficient lighting, recycling, and preventive maintenance and spill prevention programs. Clean textiles are delivered on fuel efficient trucks that take the most direct routes, cutting down on waste and emissions. Clean green best management practices are approved by ASTM International. The technical experts, scientists, and environmental professionals who create unparalleled standards for building consumer confidence in product and service quality.

 

Other linen and uniform services claim they’re green, but only those who are clean green certified verify and quantify through continuous objective assessment by industry standards. Not sure if a company’s clean green certified? Ask to see their certificate. Businesses need launderers that demonstrate responsible leadership and sustainability and conservation through reusing, reclaiming, and recycling resources. To find a CleanGreen certified company near you, visit cleangreen.org.

 

Now back to the episode. My name’s Shay, cofounder and CEO of Ambercycle. What we’re doing is developing a process to separate blended fabrics and generate a new yarn. So, we call this sort of the ecosystem for infinite textiles. As many of you know, there’s a lot of garments that go to landfill.

 

Every year, around a 160,000,000,000 garments end up in landfills. That’s, that’s a large problem for the industry. All these garments are problematic because they are blends of materials. And so, if we are to develop a solution for circular textiles, circular garments, it’s important that these garments can be processed. And the challenge that we saw 5 years ago was how how are we going to develop a solution for these blended garments?

 

So that’s what we started 5 years ago, developing a process for the sort of scale up of technology to process blended garments and convert them into base materials. So that’s kind of what we’re really we’re really focused on. So, essentially, we we we talk about polyester as the number one sort of material in fashion, and we find that certainly true in in the linen services industry. So right now, what we’re doing with Prudential is very interesting. We are taking garments from beyond repair, garments that can’t be sort of used again in the linen service industry and bringing them to our facility here in Los Angeles in downtown LA and are running our process to generate new materials and new yarns from from those materials.

 

So we’re doing this at a at a small scale right now, but we think this is something that will scale into a point where all garments can be sort of taken in and processed, back into new yarn. So our output is a yarn, and we are right now working on systems to essentially get that to a point where those yarns can go back into the the linen services industry. This is sort of encapsulating sort of a larger topic of sort of circularity. Obviously, the fashion industry as a whole is very problematic. So, getting this to a point where where it’s it’s sort of sustainable for everyone is important.

 

So so yeah. So the the challenge is is really kind of, getting this to a point where, everything is scalable. And so we we are working sort of quite quite, focused on the polyester component. As as Chris mentioned, it’s important to focus on that as the biodegradation is not, is not something that, is very good for polyester. And so so we have a a very strong focus on polyester as a material.

 

We’re producing the yarns right now, and, those yarns are then going into, sort of textile applications, knits, wovens, things that are used in the linen services industry. One of the other things I’ll touch on is the collection mechanisms. So right now, a problem that we all know of is, garments are everywhere. They’re dispersed all over the world. So collecting them is very important.

 

And one of the things that’s really interesting about the sort of linen services industry is that there could potentially be collection points everywhere. Every major municipality has a very robust network for textile collection and processing. There’s a lot of already existing infrastructure for the collection of these materials. So it’s a very, synergistic, relationship that could be built to make circular fashion a reality, working hand in hand, as we are with, companies like Kris and Prudential to build out sort of these larger supply chains for collecting garments. As we know, the linen services industry, the uniforms industry, does produce a lot of textile waste.

 

So this is something that we can look at as a as a lighthouse case for the industry as a as an overall idea for what circularity could be. So that that that to us is is really important. One of the things that we’re really focused on as well is scaling up in America. And so so we’re really kind of thinking about how to how to get this working here. As you all know, textiles is a very global problem.

 

There’s waste generated everywhere. And so, so it’s really important for us to to figure this out, how to how to do this. We’re also trialing a program, with labeling garments, where the garments are essentially being, tagged. So we when we make a yarn, the yarn gets, turned into a new garment and that garment, comes with a QR code, tag on it. That is an important area of investigation for us.

 

So, yeah. So, you know, we’re a young company. We’re developing the technology. We are really, really honored to be working with a company like Prudential, on on piloting these these new business models, to get something to scale that might significantly reduce, the amount of material going to landfill. And this is a really good starting point to get the overall sort of textile economy into a circular business model.

 

Really starting with the linen services industry where we think this is really the the the people and the and and and the infrastructure that will actually make it happen. As fashion brands start to adopt these new concepts, you know, there is infrastructure that’s already existent in this sort of industry. If you want to hear more about sustainable practices in the global linen, uniform, and facility services industry, make sure you tune in to the recent Make the World Green Again webinar from TRSA and its international partners, DTV from Germany, ETSA representing Europe, FBT from Belgium, and TSA UK. You can view the full 90 minute recording in TRSA’s on demand learning center, which houses more than 100 and 50 webinars, training videos, and other e learning courses. Many of TRSA’s on demand webinars can be accessed by members for free at www.trsa.org/ondemand.

 

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