Awarepreneurs Interview - Adam Baruchowitz

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Today our guest is Adam Baruchowicz and his bio is. Adam is the Chief Recycling Officer at Return to Vendor. A pioneer in textile recycling, he began collecting and recycling clothing as a personal project and now has recycled, get this, over £20 million of clothing and textiles. He began his career as a day trader building and managing a team of 15 people. In 2001, he co founded HEB magazine, one of the highest circulated Jewish culture magazines in the world. Adam has 15 years of experience creating collection hubs for municipalities, apartment buildings, organizations, and fashion brands. And Adam is going to lead us in the topic of making circularity possible today. Adam, welcome to AwarePreneurs.

Thanks for having me.

Really good to have you here and this conversation about circularity. I'm really curious if somebody has been in the space to get your sense of what's happening in it. Before we do that, give us a little bit of sense of just your origin story as a recycling passionate human. £20 million. That's my brain. Like, first of all, if we were.

Gonna get 35 million pounds, but oh, my gosh, it's an old bio. Sorry, I got. Okay.

I mean, like, I don't update it that much.

It's not.

We're not a public company, right?

Keep on talking about it, like, £35 million.

Like, like, is that a warehouse? Like, how, like, what would it take to contain £35 million? That's a lot.

I think the best way to think about it is, you know, let's see.

A truck is about £40,000. Oh, my gosh, there's 50 weeks in a year, and so that's about a truckload a week.

Let's just say, okay, 18 for like 20.

I've been in business since 2004, so let's just say, you know, yeah, that's.

A lot of 18 weeks better than.

Others, you know, but more or less.

Something like that, let's just say a.

Lot of 18 wheelers for a lot of years to get to 35 million. So, like, how did this passion come about? You're recycling at a scale that's really uncommon. And we're going to talk about where you're going with that, but, like, just the origins of it. Why did you land on recycling is something that you personally wanted to put so much time and energy into.

Yeah, I mean I can't speak for.

Other people's paths, but this one is really just a bunch of random events leading to this. So I can't say like while I'm.

A conscious person, a conscious consumer, my whole life really like I would say a minimalist. So maybe that's where the alignment comes.

Between me and like my, my, my, my current path. But really back in the day I was a day trader, if you can believe. I was a, an early day trader and one of my best friends was a partner in our day training firm. So anyone who was basically pretty decent at day trading would basically train other people how to day trades because you only have one set of eyes and hands. This was in the early 2000s and that day trading life availed me travel. So I had gone to Chile on a random trip that was meant to be going to Ecuador, but a volcano erupted in Ecuador and said you can't go there, but you could go anywhere else. And me and my friend have a badge back. We're like, let's go to Chile.

So I met what was to be.

My future partner in his basically secondhand.

Store in central Santiago.

And he said, well not only like these are the things you should do in Santiago, but not only that, I.

Actually live in New York so maybe we should hang when we get back, when I get back to New York.

And so I knew about him. He told me about the opportunities of.

Used clothing collection those days.

But I was a successful day trader.

And pretty happy on those paths. Well, my best friend was one evening hit by a car and paralyzed. And so I got very involved in, in spinal cord research. I did a lot of events with spinal cord injury research charities and I became in love with one of these charities called the Miami Project to cure Paralysis. And we go to these, they have these really incredible annual events at the Waldorf Historia where it's like the great sports legends dinners. And like they would get. Because the founder of that of organization, Nick Bonacante's son was paralyzed and so he was like in, involved in NBC Sports. So he had like a lot of ties to like really good sports stuff.

And like, I mean I believe like Michael Jordan was there one night, you know and Kelly Slaters there was like.

Really interesting, they really got some interesting.

Interesting sports stars to be part of that sports legends dinner. It just was a fantastic community. And so as we were business partners always trying to figure out ways to get my friend back in action. And then I saw a bag being left in my hall. I lived in Manhattan and thought like, it doesn't really make sense for any organization to come for like one bag at a time. And I'm from Long island and the way they do collections in Long island is either like they have a big bin where you place in like a.

Mall or something like that, an outdoor.

Bin, or you know, it'll be a.

Charity, so called charity that'll come, but.

It'Ll be like a man with a.

Van and like they'll say that, you know, like you leave it out in your driveway and they'll collect.

So these are what I knew.

And I was thought like, well, you know, it takes like a man with.

A van is gonna take a long time to like go around and hit 300 units in this building alone. There's 300 units.

So what if we could place a.

Bin inside of this building?

And so what started as an idea.

Grew into a little bit of a grassroots.

Hey, convince my building manager.

Hey, convince your building mat.

You know, like, and we got to.

Like 10, 15 buildings.

And it was kind of like cool.

Little project because we had an outlet for everything. We collected my friend from Chile, and so we got some donations from some.

Organizations for vehicles and stuff like that. And it was just like a cool project to raise awareness for spinal cord injury research and also work with my friend again. And little did I know, also go.

Down the path of environmental justice.

So this was 2004, mind you. You know, we built a little bit of a cool website and like this is almost pre Google, you know, and called it clothing recycling. Why did we call it clothing recycling? Well, because my friend told me what.

Happens with the items. 50 can be reused as second hand, 25 is going to be used as rags, 20 is going to be used as shoddy shredded, low grade fiber products.

So about 95 to 97 of the items that you collect are going to be reused in some form or another. So to me that sounded like a recycling business. And frankly, being the entrepreneur that I am, you know, the option might have.

Been to go down the nonprofit path with this.

And you know, frankly, it's easier to.

Form an LLC and just start tomorrow with your idea than have all the, you know, the different obligations of a non for profit. That was one reason.

And also I thought there was a business here, you know, so like, I didn't want to be limited to whatever.

Non for profits are limited to. So I've been battling the for profit, non for profit business for 20 years.

There'll always be an email that comes.

In why someone can and can't work with me for that reason.

And quite often I tell people I'd be a lot richer if I was.

A non for profit.

Me personally, because I probably missed out.

On a lot of business that that has been offered to non for profits because of this just general idea about clothing donation and non for profit world.

So that was.

And so. Yeah, yeah. So that was.

Or didn't you. You had this kind of a funny thing happened on the way to Ecuador kind of moment and suddenly you're like convincing whole buildings of people to recycle their clothes, right?

Yeah. And.

And really fell in love with it. Really fell in love with it. You know, at the same time I was doing other things, had this magazine, you know, and like had knowledge of.

Branding and marketing and stuff like that. And I saw the movie Inconvenient Truth and that was pretty much a seminal moment for me. And I think a lot of people, you know, where it's like, whoa, there's a. And I mean, for those that don't know it, I'm sure, like most of your listeners know, but I think produced by Al Gore, the vice president. Al Gore, who has definitely gone down the path of environmentalism since his presidential run. And that really opened my eyes to like just the damages of what was happening in the world. And kind of like, I just put like one on one together and I was like, kind of what we're doing.

Is it's kind of environmental. So first it was just a project to raise money for, you know, a charity and not really thinking so much.

Of the environmental ramifications of it. But then when that.

The movie came out, I was like, huh, what we're doing is kind of green.

We're extending the life of it. We're keeping out of landfills, you know.

And I was putting that together and that was all a movement was starting with like a lot of environment. I think a lot of environmentalists kind.

Of came out of that, that like, era.

And I was, you know, meeting people at like green drink events and stuff like this and kind of found a community around the green community. And it was really like, cool people that I really just super kindred with, you know, And I. I wouldn't consider myself like a super. Like, I was a day trader, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, a partial capitalist here, you know what I mean?

And.

And like, I wouldn't consider myself like a guy who's gonna strap myself to a tree and like, be like, you know, like, I'm going down with this tree. But like what I, my path is always in thought process has always been like, can we align the economics of.

Doing good with like, good for the environment? And that's kind of like as I started going on that path and then.

There was the crisis of 2007, 2008, right, with like real estate going to the toilet, banks going out of business. And I was like, still kind of.

Dabbling with day trading those days, you know, and like, wow, if Bear Stearns.

And Lehman Brothers can go to zero, anything can happen. And so you know that what wasn't going down to zero at that point, my organic grassroots clothing recycling business, that was still, people were still signing up for bins and buildings. And I just thought, you know what? Unfortunately waste isn't going out of business anytime soon. And so I was just like, well that was basically I've been from that point forward, 2007, 2008, I'm like, I'm all in on this. I'm gonna lock myself in on this and, and start growing this. And went from like 15 buildings to 200 buildings. Partnered with Grow NYC to be like.

The, the backbone of the New York City green market collections, collecting at, at.

The peak like 35 weekly green markets, I believe, you know, and like just became really part of like doing drives.

With like dozens of, of Department of Education schools wherever.

I thought there was like a hub of community, I thought there was a.

Place for a waste, waste management solution.

And really the thing that's kept me.

In textiles for so long is that experience of like, sorry, you can ask me a question, but I'm just like.

You know, like, I'll be done.

Oh, you're excited. I love how excited you are. It's awesome.

Yeah, well, just to tie it up is just that having worked these green.

Markets and like people handing you a bag of clothes and communicating as a one to one on like this solution for people with clothing, which is interesting, is that people have like a nostalgic attachment to it. They, they live a life in it, they take photos in it. You know, they've grown out of it.

They'Ve lost weight in it, they've gained weight in it. They all, they've lived in their clothing and have like a nostalgic attachment to it. So when they hand you that back, they say bless you, even though they're giving me money. And that's always been an interesting thing for me. And from a waste management perspective, there's.

A lot of lessons to be learned from Clothing and it can't be commingled with the other.

Like, so there's ideas of like, single stream and multi stream, right? And like it really can't be commingled.

Because it will destroy all the value of it.

So it has to be kept out.

Of the, the other streams.

And so those lessons when it comes.

To waste management, they're very formulaic.

So those lessons are very translatable to other, other materials. And so what I have seen over the course of the existence of that.

Company was that like that bin that I placed inside a building gave the courage for electronic waste people to start collection, composting.

We started collecting the farmers markets before.

Composting started collecting at the farmers markets.

So these, these hubs of collections are repetitive. You know, they're repetitive, right?

They're, they're, they're copyable for other materials.

So while I don't know that anyone's going to give me any credit for any of this stuff, you know, the program that we started was copied by the city. Even though I have 200 pins, the.

City has like 4,000 bins.

You know, there's other e way started and now there's bins inside of buildings. You know, there's now composting all across the city where there wasn't. So I'd like to take a little credit.

I'm not saying all the credit that no one had ideas like this before.

But I've seen how little ideas can.

Grow into tremendous impact.

Beautiful. So you start with 10 or 15 buildings that you get some friend to convince, and then you scale to 200 and you say, all right, I'm all in. Like, talk to us about the early days of how did you start to make it from, you know, a passion project, an impact project to like, all right, now, as you said, I love what you said. I'm going to do this as a business. No, this isn't a. Not for profit. I want this to be a social enterprise that has its own revenue. We don't need a tax donation, whatever.

We're going to make it work in a capitalist economy to show that you can, you know, do good in a capitalist economy and live a good life. So, like, as you're leaning in and saying, I'm going to do this full time, what did it look like then? Was it just you? Did you have a team? Like, where were you selling the clothes?

Help.

And like, one of the things about.

Just me personally is like, I'm a super connector. So, like, I have ways of kind of like getting people into my vortex with like good ideas that they can get like excited about.

But we had like always been super efficient. I mean, running any sort of business.

In New York, especially a waste management business, just, it's. You need to be hyper efficient. Right. And so I, I always say this is like a very local solution for a very big locale. Like, it just. I knew, I know New York very well, I know New Yorkers. The idea, like I understood that convenience has always got to be. And frankly, whatever, it's beyond New Yorkers, but convenience has got to be at the, the center of it all.

And that's why we place it in buildings.

There's no excuse, if this bin is in your building, there's no excuse to not put your clothing in there.

Right.

And funny, I mean the heart, I would say early stage, it was just.

Kind of the hardest part was like convincing building managers because you know, they.

Like, they are spaces premium in.

In New York, you know, of course, whatever.

But then like, you know, you walk in and they'd be like, I got no room. And I'm like, let's go for a.

Walk in this building. I mean like, the size of this.

Bin is this size. Put it out of the way, promote.

It to the building, notify them and.

Make sure that it's not an inconvenience.

But it's accessible, you know, and so.

That was like my, I mean that was, that was the work. But, but then I like put a website and be like, request the bin for your building. You know, like, and then people would. So that's, you know, like I like.

To do like, where were you selling them? So you're getting all these buildings signing up and you know, 200 or however many people in a building might be like, suddenly like, what were you doing with the clothes? Where were you selling them?

Well, that was the thing, like I kind of reverse engineered because I had.

The partner who already had distribution.

So you're sending them all to Chile?

Yeah, well, no, he has a sorting.

Facility in New Jersey.

Okay.

That's where I, we, we would deliver in the early days, was bringing it to his sorting facility in Chile. And in fact, for rtv, we're still working with him on being like a central location to aggregate our circular goods. So, you know, you, you make strong relationships with people and, and you, you.

Know, frankly, we've had our ups and downs because I've always had like another.

Big idea and he's just always been like, bring me more clothes.

But like, you know, I've always been.

Obsessed since the moment I heard a concept of circularity. Whereas, like I had mentioned earlier, like the economics around used clothing collections is that 50 can be used as secondhand 50 to 60, and that's the economic driver. But that other 50% is what I've been obsessed with thinking, if you could.

Just up the value of that other.

50%, now you're upping the commodity value. And if you up the commodity value, now you're upping the incentive to keep items out of landfills.

And if you do that now, you're.

Having massive impact nationally.

And so, you know, you start seeing like waste characterization studies and you start.

To learn that like 6% of all waste is textiles. Right. I think the numbers, like nationally, around £25 billion go to landfills. It's probably more because my numbers are probably out there. And these numbers are like always, like years back in New York, you had.

Asked me, like, what was the early days, like, One of the early, like.

Things that like triggered my brain was like a waste characterization study that said about this 6% goes to landfills and about nearly 400 million pounds of New York New Yorker clothing goes to landfills.

So I'm like, that's a lot. You just multiply that by the market.

Rate and you're like, okay, that's over $100 million. Like, you don't need to go that far.

If you're just pretty solid in New York, you got a pretty good business. So, you know, you could see right there that that's how waste is. It's. There's a lot of value. And unfortunately, it's been an out of.

Sight, out of mind game. And I've just been obsessed with trying to find ways to find the economics around this waste to value. And, you know, that's what led us to, you know, the formation of return to vendor, my current company.

So before I want to go to that, before we do that, you tossed out a term. You hear, if you're in the social entrepreneur impact world, you hear circularity tossed out there. But you started. I want to be more precise because you have a very precise mind. I like that about you. You're talking about recycling led you to circularity. And there, there's a lot of overlap, but they're not exactly the same. So what's the difference? How is circularity different than recycling?

Well, I would say it's like born of frustrations.

Like, as a. What drove me to circularity was born.

Of frustration being a recycler. Right. And so as a recycler, People demand that you. I mean, you're basically a.

And I think this, I don't know.

I can't speak for all recycling industries, you know, but it's like you're basically like a band aid for broken industry is what you are. There's all these expectations put on you to create value from waste streams that you didn't generate, right?

So like, so when it comes to.

Handling textile waste, there's limitations to what you can do with it and the limitations to what the value is here based off of like what just the economics of this marketplace is, right? So you could only do so much. I mean, you have the confines of those, the marketplace. And so that's.

That was like really evident to me.

As a business person and also as a, you know, I was an economics major back in the day. I could see like micro and macro ideas, you know what I mean? And so waste in America is like out of sight, out of mind. You know, people don't even know. Like there's not like really like a direct like cost to it. So people aren't like in touch with it that much commercial.

There's cost, so there's a little bit more from commercial business. But like, you know, you have this.

Fashion industry that's not. I mean, I was like, if you're just going to talk about clothing, you know, it's like a fashion industry that's like. Wasn't addressing it at all. And you know, so like there's all this waste and you start doing investigations like why, why is this not. And why. And then I was a very public collector.

So for me I'm like, bring me everything.

But that surmounted to problems for me because I would, everyone would.

Without going too deep, I would be a New York collector, which is like.

Basically the best market to be collecting. You know, the association is if you're.

In a market that's like people spend a lot of money on clothes that.

The waste from those clothes should be.

Really such a public collector and calling it recycling. You know, people were very happy to bring me their one tattered like sock and be like, you'd be surprised. There's all types of people in New York and especially ones that attend the farmers market. I love you people, but just don't get me wrong, you know, it's like they're. You'd be surprised when you're standing there.

Like people bringing you one thing, you.

Know, I mean there's, there's all sorts of people. I've seen it all, you know what I mean?

In One form or another, right?

And so when I brought clothing and.

Like, when you don't really hear about.

It when the markets are good, but when the markets are bad.

And that typically is associated with the dollar being strong, which no one in America ever talks about, because $being strong is like a good thing. We're an importing company, a country, not an exporting country. So, like, when the dollar is strong, it makes it harder for the markets where these clothings finally land, whether it's Central America, South America, Europe, you know, Eastern Europe or Africa. Like, these markets, they want to buy less at that point. So you only find out the tight markets when you're the sorters kind of.

Start being a little bit more critical of your loads. And so, you know, just with that mind frame, it's like it's, it's considered.

Contamination when, when your loads are not fitting those industry values of 50%, that's.

Basically the general guidelines. And if your numbers are not fitting.

Within those guidelines, they're going to start complaining to you.

And it's the worst when you're collecting £40,000 a week and you don't know.

How to move it.

So it's not just as easy as collecting it, and it's not just easy as. And these are complications that you only.

Know from doing the dirty work. And I think that that's.

I have a lot of like, value.

In doing the dirt, you know, like, you know, it's one thing to come up with like, esoteric academic ideas for, like, what should happen, but like, when you have like 20 years under your belt and like, and all different, like, you know, crises and hurricanes and kovins.

And, you know what I mean? Like, when you've been through those ups.

And downs and market ups and downs, you get an understanding of what it takes to weather these operations, you know what I mean? But like, yeah, for me, like, I just can't. Like, people are always like, well, why don't you just. Can you get a good thing? Why not replicate this and get to like 100 million, like.

And that was like more trucks, more.

Problems managing the stuff.

So I was trying to always find.

The, the best value proposition in the mix. And, you know, for me, that's where circularity came in to circle back to the circularity part. It's like, why does all of this stuff have so little value at the. Like, why does the other 50 have so little value under investigation? It's because of the blends, because of the accessories, and underneath the blends, because of spandex. We have a lot of stretch and all these things. And basically because of those blends, it makes it very hard to separate those blends. And that's why the, it's not in.

My mind.

If you could put cotton.

In the cotton bucket and you could put wool in the wool bucket and.

You could put polyester in the W.

And if it was all 100%, then you have value that you just sent to the reprocessor and you're good. But because of the blends, because of the cost, it's very hard to separate.

To get to the same value of virgin. And that's been the conundrum here.

And so I mean, I'm just a one man, I'm just one man with some ideas here, you know what I mean?

Like, I'm not, I don't betray to know them all. You know what I mean?

And so this is, this is what led me, these, those investigations led me.

Down the paths of that solution of mono materiality as a way out of the solution. You know, thankfully after being in the business so long, it started becoming mainstream like textiles or like, I don't know.

Anywhere from second to the 10th most. I don't even like most biggest polluter in the world. Cotton with its water poly with its need for, you know, for fossil fuels. Right. Like, you know, global supply chains going to places where people are not monitoring water effluence into the street. It's like it's a dirty business. And because like the brands are so far from actual like production, it's like everyone's kind of got their hands clean here. So who's to take responsibility for this? You know, it's a, it's an interesting conundrum, you know, Ellen MacArthur foundation and their ideas on circularity.

I started becoming hit on and like.

I was just like, to me, circularity.

Just makes a whole lot of sense. It's just common sense.

Design with end of life in mind and take responsibility at end of life to reconstitute it. I think that brands should be involved in that chain. And you know, I think it's a simple sort of elegant way to approach putting products into market and maximizing value.

Into, into the future.

Beautiful. So let's do this in a moment. I want to come back and hear about how you formed this idea of circularity and baked it into return to vendor your company you're working now that has some of this circularity baked into the business model. What you're doing with it sounds like there was a recent raise and to help scale this company. I want to hear all about that. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor.

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Welcome back everybody. We are here today talking about making circularity possible today and Adam getting back to where we were right before the break. All this leads right to your new venture called Return to Vendor. What is it and why did you start it?

It's a circular materials platform based on.

Using just one material, based around the ethos of modern material design utilizing just one material. And that material is a regenerated nylon which is already a proven to be recyclable material and it's in the environment.

In abundance in things like fishing nets. So you have nylon that's in it.

And It's a nylon 6 to be more specific because there's different types of nylons out there. So in, in my days of, of recycling I used to go to these conferences and I was lucky to meet a neighbor who's turned into a good friend, who's turned into a partner. When our kids went to preschool together. His name is Kangar Yogi Kalmuth and he's a material scientist and he's been working, he was working on a mono material shoe utilizing this nylon that we were talking about and together.

I was.

Helping him basically with this shoe and basically like connecting the dots with what I believed was funders with Designers I.

Was connecting him with, with my community.

Of people I knew to help lift what his, through what his idea was. And this was pre Covid and I.

Was still doing wearable collections and I was working on some ideas of circularity.

Projects already by that point. Well, Covid hit, as we all know.

Yeah.

And so while I was hiding in.

My friend's basement at a lake house in, in Pennsylvania, I had a lot of time to think. You know, I was kind of like inspired by, you know, all those stories of like dolphins coming back into the harbor and people seeing mountaintops where they hadn't seen mountaintops in a long time and thought, wow, maybe this could be the movement, the moment where we, we.

Slow down and we really like, this could be that inflection point and we.

We, we move into a more responsible world. Why was I wrong?

But anyway, had many calls with my.

Friend Gingarthur and just tossing around some ideas because we had a lot of time on my hands and I was basically like, what else could be done.

With this nylon that you're working on?

You know?

And as it turns out, a lot of things. A lot of things. And during that same period of hiding, I was introduced to our third co.

Founder, William Calvert, who has been in fashion, a fashion designer for 20, 25 years.

And when we started putting our noodles together, you know, it was like, whoa, this is, this is three out of the box thinkers that might just be the legs of a stool that can put through together this really ambitious idea.

Of a circular platform.

And so we just worked through the ideas, came up with the concept, started.

Building some decks, raised a pre seed.

Round to kind of get this up.

And running and start to hash out even further ideas to the point where we decided to do a full seed round in which we raised in 2023 from Coastal Adventures was like just, you know, the best partners and esteemed gold star VC that believes in big ideas. I believe some of their investments are ChatGPT, Impossible Foods, Fusion companies.

You know, you can rattle them off, you know, but they're big ideas.

It's a big idea vc and we.

Were able to prove to them our.

Concept of sourcing science and system might.

Just be, we might, we might just have what it takes to really be.

The breakthrough circular company.

And when you were working on raising capital, because that's one of the conversations people listen for, one of the big conundrums, if you want to have impact at scale, most people are going to be looking at some kind of investment somewhere along the journey, right?

Yes.

As you were having conversations now, you said 2023 was your seed round. So still, still kind of in that pretty rapid increase of people throwing around the word circularity. Right. Your pre seed rounds.

It was like I would say honestly it was the, it was definitely already.

People were saying it's hard times with capital.

Yeah.

It wasn't, it wasn't like, like I don't know that I can't speak to.

Easy money and hard money, but I.

Would say the era of easy money.

Was drying up during that point.

You know, like the COVID bump, whatever like was definitely ended and there was.

People like looking at things pretty honestly at that point, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Do you feel like having that impact focus being a circularity based company, was that net positive it made it easier to engage investors in serious conversation? Did it make it harder or was it agnostic? Like it doesn't really matter. Just show me the numbers.

Well, you know, I think it's the combo of circularity driven by science that really was it.

And the science that we were displaying.

Was very impressive to them.

And our key unlock in that raise in which we just got an incredible trial response to was attempting to create performance out of mono.

So through mono material designs. Just like simple design tweaks might get you some simple products like a tote bag for example could probably be made. You know there's certain products that can.

Be made just through model material ethos. Probably very early to start, but we.

Had, we had a plan to use.

Science through my partner's experience and expertise.

And we already had some trial wins.

With creating stretch out of a mono material approach.

And when I say that all of that is still there is there's additives.

That go into this nylon, but it's such a small, small bit of additives that it can be filtered out just the way that colors are filtered out in the nylon recycling process.

So you could still get to a pure pellet at the end. Right.

And, and, but still so we can get performance while keeping to recycle ability is what I'm saying.

And so we had like, we already.

Had some tests to show them and.

That and Gangarthur is just like an incredible communicator like from, for a science mind. He's an incredible communicator and an incredible mind.

And I think that they were really like seeing the combo of you know the, the, the, the stage up. You can do it with lo fi products and, and you could see the complexity being added, being unlocked with science and he being the one who can.

Really do that with system of take back, you know, and with William's ability.

To kind of sell the dream of beautiful products.

It's like you can really see how, you know, when, when we do our intros in any call right away, almost.

Anyone on the other side is like, I get how this team is the team to make this happen, if anyone is possible.

Yeah, you got, you got a great team. So, so you're two years in, you know, or at least two years post your seed raise and tell us what does the business look like today compared to your early vision?

Yeah, I mean I'd say it's, it's keeping to it. There's been a lot of lessons, of.

Course, and probably, you know, you can always in hindsight see how you could have done things differently.

But you know, it's been, and I don't want to use this as, as.

Like a, a crutch or an excuse.

But it's been a choppy, it's been two years.

It's been quite a few years, hasn't it?

Yeah, yeah. And, and so, you know, the people.

That, that we're approaching are definitely, you know, different priority priorities have been up and down with obviously the tariffs and, and there's been political things and there's.

Been tariffs and you know, and so I would say that we had a, you know, we first, we were just.

Building on our supply chain, you know, and, and that took a minute and.

So a lot of people are confused.

Like what we are and we really are an integrated supply chain, you know, via a circular toolkit. So all of our partners are integrated with the common belief of a circular future.

And they all, they're all sold that we can be selling that future and they want to be part of the supply chain. So we're all kind of like, we're, we're integrating that as like the hub of the, like we're not the net.

Collector, we're not the net recycler, we're.

Not the yarn spinner. We're all of these things because circularity requires it. So we're, you know, got strategic joint.

Ventures on all of these fronts.

Right.

And so it's a pretty elegant solution. It's a very asset light solution. So you know, in comparison to the other ones, the other organizations that are providing, you know, sort of the textile to textile solutions, you know, this is.

A very asset light, elegant solution where, you know, circularity is possible now, doesn't require hundreds of millions of dollars for a plant that might take years to develop.

I'm all for every solution.

So I don't want to talk, I don't want it to come across like neg, you know, but like, I just want that to show our advantage is.

That, you know, being lean is a, being lean is a really, a really big advantage for you.

Yeah, yeah, it's an, it's a real advantage. And you know, that being said, you.

Know, we are approaching the biggest brands in the world and try, you know.

And, and you know, just getting learning the sales cycles, the brands and you know, they, they, they, they take longer than we thought. These is, this is a lesson, you know, that just the sales cycles, you know, but we do have, you know, a couple of JDAs in the works and we have some proof of concepts in the work with some really impressive brands across different.

And the interesting thing about nylon is that it has many, many applications beyond fashion. So, you know, we're crossing to automotive.

And, and, and even, you know, motorcycles and you know, you know, and even flooring and health care. And, and there are places where circularity makes sense first. So let's go attack those first. Like, meaning like workwear, right? Like, and it's a funny thing because people call me and say, hey, can you take my workwear and destroy it? Well, yeah, well, that should be made circular. That's like, that kind of intelligence can.

Go a long way.

You know, when someone calls you for something and just wants it destroyed, that's a perfect thing that should be made circular, right? So, you know, if because they want it destroyed for proprietary reasons, they don't want their brand around the world, you know. And so, so those, those things are great applications. You know, health care, you know, hospital scrubs are a great place and that's sort of like a closed loop. Even youth sports is like a great place. Like no one wants your kids old jerseys when they wear out of it, you know, so, so trying to enter all these different markets and it like really can sound like, wow, too big. They're trying to chew off a lot more than. But our SKUs are really pellets, you know, yarn and, and stretch yarn. Like those are like.

It's just, it's feeding into the system.

In different ways through partners.

But, you know, we, we're very focused on like our strengths and where we.

Come in beautiful and, and you've reached. One of the things I love about this story, Adam, is you reach far beyond the, you know, person standing at the market in the growers market in New York, like buying kale, right? Like you're good selling close to that person but that your, your, your scope and your scale and who your clients or customers are really different. Right. So one question I have for you is how much of what our TV is producing with more enterprise, more commercial B2B type accounts, is it the product itself that's catching their attention? Is it the pricing or is it the circularity? Like what's the recipe? It's probably some of all the above.

But it's really all the above because.

What'S the recipe is circularity 2% or 50% with you know like your average customer, how much is that part of their motivation or they all pretty.

This, yeah, I would say this, that.

Like circularity is a north star now.

Like that's the thing that's changed over.

Like just say maybe this decade.

Like I, I, it's, it's known and you know, I think like where self.

Motivation or preservation comes in, like that's.

You know, I can't speak to that because you know there is legislations coming in. So let's mind you like being responsible might not just be like a and.

One for people, it might be forced upon them.

And if you asked me in the pledges that were made from these same brands that are not fulfilling pledges by 2025, okay. Circularity was already on the tip of their tongues in you know, 2019. So you know, this is not like circularity in, in a company, in an organization from itself is not just like.

You'Re not just gonna have one avenue.

You need to get everyone on board because it's like it's marketing, it's buying, it's sourcing, it's innovation, it's all these things. And I would say even from above it's like it's not just like one group that can do circularity, it's collaboration, right? It's, it is corporate, it is innovation, you know, from, from different companies like us. It is legislation driving the economics because and, and I don't think we, we don't. The cool thing about RTV is we actually have models that you know, keep all this stuff.

It's cost parity already and then maybe even benefits into the.

As long as you take responsibility for it and bring it back to us. We get, actually have decreasing price whereas other materials, that, that's for nylon, but other materials. It's going to be hard for polyester.

To reach virgin polyester price because virgin.

Polyester price is already, it's, it's, it's, it's already kind of as low as.

I think it's ever going to get maybe.

So I think my, my estimation is.

That recycled poly is going to be more expensive.

And so, so if we can drive.

Recycled nylon prices down by controlling flows of recycled nylon and innovating in that nylon, potentially we can drive it to lower than recycled polyester prices.

And if you can do that with similar type performance, you're not unlocking like.

A small percentage, you're unlocking a huge percentage of the marketplace.

And so, you know, I would say that's part of our model.

And like, you know, when you think about the steps of span, when you.

Combine like nylon with spandex, there, there's cost to steps. So there's something about the elegant way that we're even combining our, our additive with the nylon. It's actually comes in cheaper than the.

Two process part of.

So you. Yes, it's early stages and yes, we're talking about at a volume state, but these are all, We've kept a keen eye to the economics, understanding that economics.

Have to make sense before the business of sustainability can make sense. It really has to be aligned.

Excellent. So lots of progress in the past two to three years. Look ahead with us, Adam, like three years from now, what do you think our TV looks like?

Oh, it's, it's, it's that we don't have to go to brands one by one. There's brands knocking, knocking down our doors.

There's recyclers that want to open up plants with us because we're just like.

You know, exploding out of, out of our capacities. And, and they see the business. Right. Circularity is not just a buzzword but.

Becomes a little bit more of a commonplace. And when people see our tv, they start, you know, having an understanding of what went into this standard. You know, it's responsible sourcing, responsible production, responsible take back. And then ideally, people are taking those ideas past the products that even RTV represents into their daily lives that are being like, well, why is this garbage can more circular?

Why isn't this table more circular? Why isn't this chair more circular? So I, I see the impact of.

Us doing this with, you know, with textiles apparel into these other, you know, verticals that I've mentioned, categories that I advert.

You know, I see it, you know.

Extending well, well, well beyond that.

And so that's like a messaging that's changing consumer behavior, that's a changing corporate behavior, changing even maybe some legislative behavior.

To all align with, you know, the economic, what I believe is intuitively the economic benefits of creating value from waste Beautiful.

Adam, I can hang out with you all day and I know you're super busy. So our listeners. So as we start to wind down, like we said, circularity. I talk to so many entrepreneurs, especially on the younger end of the spectrum that are looking at our world and saying it's kind of a mess out there. Circularity makes sense to me and Paula, I want to do this but it, you know, it takes a, it's not how most business schools would train somebody. There are exceptions but you know, you have to do a lot of learning on your own and they're looking for models and pathways. If you were going to make a suggestion to an entrepreneur who's passionate about circularity but they haven't found their way into a startup, they haven't launched their thing yet, they haven't found a company to work in, but they really want to. What would you say to that? Hungry? I want to make a difference.

Circularity is calling my name, but I don't know how to start. What would you say to that person?

Yeah, I would think like first and foremost is just to like identify some.

Type of behavior and problem that excites you.

You know, like I, I think first and foremost you should probably be like interested in some, you know, people are.

Interested in circularity for all different types of, of reasons.

You know, I think you could just.

Identify whe, whether it's the coffee cup, whether it's the takeout.

You know, like there's a solution in all of that. So like what's, what's a problem? First of all you have to like be like what, what's a challenge you.

Want to take on?

And then a lot of it is just like sort of like efficient dot connecting, you know and then where you find the obstacles, you know, frankly there's.

Probably solutions out there.

So it's try to like I connect the dots with some sort of either other industry that's kind of has a.

Solve that you can translate into that.

Industry and, and that's, that's what I do. That's what I do a lot. And I mean I think you gotta like you gotta learn a lot, you.

Gotta educate yourself, you know and a.

Lot of it is just borrowing ideas. Like there's a lot of great ideas. Like I, I had the blessing of.

Just speaking in, in Istanbul a couple of weeks ago. I was, I was invited to the Global Zero Waste forum. And you know, it was just, I.

Had to play, I was representing our TV and speaking, you know, at this conference and I met, I probably had.

A Meaningful conversation from. With 40 different people from 40 different countries. And.

And so I would say there's likely.

A solution towards your interest out there.

So I would say borrow, beg and steal ideas that are along those lines but that are working elsewhere, frankly, like, I don't know that this currently exists, but I do think there's probably that's. I was almost inspired to like start.

This at the end of the conference. But like, you know, I got a lot of my.

But there, I just think like really.

Take really cool ideas, start one, replicate it. Because I'm in like textiles and you know, I don't know, like, I was just like, there's rummage sales that I see. You know, what they do is that.

They'Re a community rummage sale. And like it's at the school. The school says bring in your clothing. It's a dollar for like they put.

It for a dollar out there. Right.

So it's like nice community, $1 per piece. So the school makes a bunch of.

Money in a one day event. Okay.

It's like a bunch, I mean, I don't know, thousands, you know, two to five thousand dollars.

What? Like something.

It's good, it's a good. Take the school. It's a community building thing. It's like a fun. Everyone's into it, they put it on tables, then they open this to the community. So you get people who are walking.

Away with new wardrobes for like $25.

They're, you know, like, like from. And that's a local solution. It's not moving anywhere. There's no, there's no transportation here. It's people showing up and leaving with a new wardrobe for very cheap. So like I love that. And what happens? Who gets the leftovers? Adam. What does Adam do with it? Well, hopefully he has circular solutions at the end, you know, with RTV and plus.

Right.

And so it's not cool that they're taking all the good stuff out of the load because no one wants to buy those loads. But however, if we start a circular future, it's totally cool because then we could like connect those dots. Or if like the city is paying me to take care of that, at least covering the costs, then that's fine too. But that is a replica idea by every school that's clothing every local, it's funding school projects and then it's a waste management solution at the end that.

We have to connect the dots. Of course.

But something like that might be replicable for, I don't know, bicycles in the school for just all of these things are translatable to other, you know, I mean like just take what's a problem? Think about it. That stop further, you know, we're all sitting like I'm not in this business of like E waste and I just know that like critical materials is a problem in like I, I'm watching, you know, the China America critical materials, right. And I'm like, I know every household.

Is sitting on a lot of gold.

And when you think about 300 units, it's a lot of gold. And when you multiply two buildings on a block or 10. So that's the thing, it's like so on and so forth. But what's the problem?

Maybe people don't feel comfortable giving their information.

So how do we build trust to get those materials out in an efficient way? This is not my problem, but any of your listeners, you know, I'd be happy to. I love to share ideas, but you get what I'm saying. When I was at the Zero Waste commit, I met someone who was in E waste and we were like noodling on this, you know, and it's like so I don't know, I'd say identify problems, attack with solutions, take some time, educate yourself, make a, build a community around that solution and you know, get your hands dirty.

There's just no other way.

If somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, I would say Adamartv Earth.

And I'm very active on LinkedIn with all of these.

When I see and I an article about something, I comment about those articles. So a lot of these circular ideas I present about our TV and, and.

Just industry in general. You know, I add my two cents quite often in LinkedIn.

Awesome. So listeners, you know how it works here. All the links will be in the show notes. Go find Adam, go check out the website, go cheer them, go learn from them on social media. Adam, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been awesome.

Cool. So thanks for joining us listeners. If you found something in this episode that stirred you and you know it did, then please share it because you know somebody else who's interested in circularity and let's learn from some folks who are further down the road. I always say to my clients, let's make new and different mistakes instead of the same one over and over again. Adam's done some of the hard work and learning for you, so share it. That'll help us help more people get into the circular economy. And if you're ready for support for your own impact business and you need some help, whether it's raising capital or building a team, you can learn more about my work@paul zelizer.com until next time, please keep working for positive impact and letting your values guide your business.

Sam.