Transcriber: David Hsu Reviewer: Jiawen Qi
So when I was born in the 70s, we pretty much threw away everything.
Today we wouldn't even consider throwing paper or aluminum or glass away,
because it's fully recyclable.
One day, we will be able to say the same thing about our clothing -
one day very soon.
I know a lot about one thing
and that's how we make textiles and apparel commercially;
I have been doing it for half of my life.
And in 2010, I had a moment of clarity,
but it could probably be best described as a breakdown.
I traveled to China for the first time without large corporate credentials.
I wasn't Stacy from DuPont or Target or Eddie Bauer.
I went in unnamed,
working for a small company that made clothing out of recycled plastic waste.
But in all of my times in China, I had never seen this.
My colleague and I got out of the car,
and we were standing just a few feet away from each other,
and we couldn't see each other clearly.
We went into our meeting, elevator doors opened,
midway through the room to the ceiling was this cloud from outside
hovering above the heads
of the corporate team that was working there.
We sat at a table under this cloud,
and we talked, we looked at their fabrics,
and we talked about how we were going to do business together.
For the first time in my career, I couldn't do my job.
And as I traveled around China for a month,
it dawned on me that my industry creates the kinds of conditions
where children are growing up and they had never seen blue sky.
These kids can't swim in their lakes or their rivers because they are black.
And then I began adding up
how many millions of yards of fabric I have created in the world.
And all of a sudden, I became linked to this massive issue
I was standing in the middle of.
Now, I am one person, and this problem is so big,
so much bigger than me.
But I am also pissed and incredibly well-trained.
(Laughter)
So, I actually decided I needed more training,
and in order to really solve this problem,
I went back to school to get my MBA in sustainable systems
at Pinchot University in Seattle.
While I was at Pinchot,
I discovered what most sustainable MBA's in their first year discover:
that we have a fundamental business model problem in this industry.
It's based on style obsolescence, with consumption as the key driver.
But I also knew
that if I went into any major brand or retailer with this epiphany,
I would be very politely told to get the hell out
until I had something interesting to talk about.
So this led me to begin my research,
and what I discovered were two things.
The very first ingredient when making any garment is fiber.
60% of all of the clothing made in the world is made from petroleum.
30% of all the clothing made in the world is made from cotton.
Both fibers require tremendous amounts of natural resources.
To make a simple cotton shirt requires 700 gallons of fresh clean water.
Then, that's only to create fiber.
Then we have to put all of this other value
into creating yarn, knit it, weave it, dye it, print it, finish it,
cut and sew it into garments
that we all buy, we all wear, we all love.
And the effect is
we create over 14 million tons of garment waste every year
in the United States.
That's enough to fill up our capital building
here in Olympia, Washington,
from top to bottom every day of the year.
So I began circling around one question:
Is there a way to break this waste down,
convert it into new fiber,
which is the linchpin of the entire system?
We discovered that it is possible,
but what we were not expecting
was that we could actually create something so beautiful.
The way the technology works is we take cotton garment waste,
we purify it,
and we convert it into a pulp;
we can then extrude this pulp into a pristine new fibre
that is finer denier than silk and stronger than cotton,
made entirely of garment waste.
What this means to you guys is we can take your old jeans,
break them down to the molecular level,
build them back up into beautiful sweaters
that look good, feel good, and hold color beautifully.
When you are done with that sweater, and it's been reused and recycled,
we can break it down again and convert it back into premium jeans.
This is a game changer.
This is actually taking what we perceive as waste
and turns it into the modern day resource.
We have gotten the attention now of some major brands and retailers,
so you are going to have clothing at some point pretty soon,
made of this new fiber.
But the reason that I do this work,
the reason I stand up against this problem,
is because I am proving a theory to myself,
and that is
"If one person can do so much damage completely unintentionally,
what can the same person do intentionally for good?"
(Applause)
So, please stand.
Please stand up.
Please stand and admire what everyone is wearing
and how every single person expresses themselves through their clothing,
and know that it is far less important what we wear,
and far more important in the way that it's made
and the way it's disposed of.
We create our future.
We also create the future for generations to come.
And when we stand together,
we become so much bigger
than anyone of us can ever be on our own.
Thank you.
(Applause)