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Barely Clothing Recyclers

A solution for clothing waste to become the fashion industry #1 raw material.
5×5 Night at Start Garden
Voting Closes:

October 21, 2024 11:59 pm

About this idea
We started with one problem: Textile Innovators need more "raw material" to meet the fashion supply chain's demand. As the fashion industry moves towards a more circular model, there are several new textile innovators each year who are turning old materials into new materials. However, they are struggling to find a great source for their "raw material" - AKA clothing waste. This is the problem Barely is solving. We have created a system where we collect unwearable garments from donation centers & municipal waste streams, sort them by material type (cotton, polyester, nylon, etc.) using our proprietary detection system, and sell the bundled material to manufacturers. We are currently creating a buying agreement with our first manufacturer - a poly-cotton recycler based in Virginia - and are planning our first pilot program for Q1 2024!
Impact
The real potential of this idea is to eliminate the approximate 92M tons of fashion waste that ends up in landfills each year. Clothing that sits in landfills emits methane, toxic chemicals and microplastics into our environment, further contributing to the climate crisis. And most often, this negative impact is "offshored" to countries such as Chile, Uganda and others that are recipients of pallets of unwearable clothes. From our estimations, we will be able to recycle 17M tons of material over the next 10 years using our system.
What I'll do with $5,000
This $5,000 grant will be used to purchase equipment for our pilot sortation system. We need a total of $73,000 to build the entire system and are seeking a number of grant and investment opportunities to gain the total amount. This $5,000 grant will help us to reach our goal and can be used to purchase small parts of the system immediately. A quick note: We started this business in 2023, but the 'When did your business start' field gave 2021 as the most recent year.
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