Threading the future of circular fashion with Peter Majeranowski of Circ

0:00Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to How I Built This Early Early and Ad Free Right Now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo, the only CRM built for B2C and the key to making Black Friday and Cyber Monday your biggest wins yet. When the holidays hit, your competition only gets louder. That's why the most successful brands use Klaviyo to cut through the noise and build personalized relationships that drive more revenue. With Klaviyo, you get marketing, service, analytics, and all your customer data together on one AI-powered platform.

0:41It's everything you need to build lasting customer relationships. Send exclusive email offers to your VIP customers. Deliver perfectly timed text to high-intent shoppers. Maximize your ad dollars with precision. Join the more than 176 ,000 brands, including Away, Patrick Ta, and Dollar Shave Club, already growing with Klaviyo. Make this holiday season your best yet at klaviyo.com. If you run a small business, you know there's nothing small about it. As a business owner, I get it. My business is and has always been all-consuming since I started it. Every day there is a new decision to make and even the smallest decisions feel massive.

1:31Well, Shopify is a commerce platform that gets what running a small business is like because Shopify was once one too. It's the right platform with all the tools you need to be successful. Shopify. Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash built. Go to shopify.com slash built. Shopify.com slash built. You know, I've always loved how Airbnb makes travel feel more authentic. Like when you stay in a home as opposed to a hotel room, you can gather around a table with friends or watch movies on a couch like you do at home.

2:16And I've had so much fun on Airbnb experiences during my travels that I decided to host my own in San Francisco this month. An original Airbnb experience all about unlocking your next big move in work or life. To learn more, head to Airbnb.com slash Guy. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So there's enough material in the clothes we throw away to keep making more clothes for decades. The fashion industry alone dumps 92 million tons of textile waste a year. And all of that cotton and polyester is recyclable. It can all be used to make brand new clothing. This phenomenon struck Peter Majoranowski as a problem looking for a solution.

3:08Peter founded a company called Cirque. It's developed patented technology that can recycle polycotton, which is what the majority of our clothes are made from. And he's already partnering with some of the biggest names in apparel to try and reduce all of that waste. Peter actually started out his career in the Navy back in 1998, where he served on ships in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. I was on board a cruiser on its way into the Arabian Gulf. quite a time to be in the service. We immediately suspected it was Osama bin Laden. And we were, instead of continuing on into the Arabian Gulf, we stayed right where we were off the coast of Pakistan and participated in the response.

3:54So I had really first row, front row seats to the conflict. Oh, wow. And then, of course, it would go on into Iraq and after Afghanistan and Iraq. And so tell me a little bit about some of the things that you did. You were also deployed for the Iraq War also on ship or on land? On land, actually. And the first person I met when I entered Iraq was, at that time, General Petraeus. And he said, what is this sailor doing in the middle of the desert? And as the Iraq war was getting underway, they really needed support in terms of analysis on the private sector that existed and how that could be utilized in the post-Saddam-Iraq to help reconstruct the country.

4:43And so I was writing a lot of white papers in the Pentagon, and then I was tapped to actually go over to Iraq and support various missions. Hmm. So when did you wrap up your naval career? I wrapped up active duty in 2004. So 2004, and I guess you went on to work from whatever defense industry management firm, but was it like an investment firm? Yes. It was a small group investing in mainly new NATO countries that were soon to join the EU. so these would be countries like Romania or Bulgaria where it was still very emerging markets with a lot of opportunity and I was excited to go there my Pentagon boss was a civilian he had a lot of experience in those markets and so we went there to invest US dollars into these emerging opportunities and for me I already got a bug for business and how enterprise can move economies and move countries.

5:53And I was very interested in that. And so for me, Eastern Europe was a great place to cut my teeth and really take on a lot of tasks. All right. So you decide in 2009 to go back to school, get an MBA. And tell me what your thinking was, that you would get an MBA and maybe start a business? Yeah. Yeah. You know, what we were doing already in Eastern Europe was pretty entrepreneurial, but I felt that I could use more sophisticated tools and just be better. And I wanted to expand my network. And so it felt like a logical next step for me. Yeah. So you start that program, you get your MBA. And I guess sometime after that, you would meet this guy, Hilary Kaprowski, who was a very famous immunologist.

6:45He was involved in the polio vaccine. And he was, I guess he was running a biotech foundation or he was running a company, a lab. and he talked to you about an idea he had. Can you tell me about that meeting and what came out of that? Yeah, Hillary actually is an old family friend. My father went to medical school with Hillary in Warsaw until the war broke out and my father had to escape and they reconnected after the war. This is World War II you're talking about? World War II, yeah. And so I was just visiting him having dinner at his house And he was talking to me about his foundation and the research they were doing in plant sciences specifically.

7:30His vision was to use plants as a vehicle for vaccines, to develop vaccines, grow vaccines. And he was really frustrated with the uptake from the FDA and other sources. So he started applying that know-how to look at industrial applications. And over dinner, he told me that he just had a patent granted and a lot of press around an engineered non-smoking tobacco plant that could be used for biofuels. Wow. Okay. So Hillary had this idea to use tobacco plants to make biofuel and even got a patent for that technology. And presumably that idea really grabbed your attention because of your time you spent working on fuel tankers in the Navy.

8:11Is that right? Yeah. One of my first jobs in the Navy, I was boarding ships smuggling oil out of Iraq against UN sanctions. And we'd usually have to sit on those ships after we intercepted them for 18 hours at a time. So I had a lot of time to think about the geopolitical nature of energy and oil. And that really ignited a passion inside of me to look at alternative fuels and how amazing it would be if you could democratize energy, take these large poker chips away from bad actors around the world. I mean, we're still seeing this today in Europe with the war in Ukraine. And so when he mentioned that to me, and it happened to be during this global recession where I was not active anymore, I thought this is something I could really dig my teeth into.

8:55And so the next thing we know, we're starting what's now CERC, but at that time was called Titan Biosciences. And this was to turn tobacco into a fuel source like biofuels for airplanes? Exactly. Or maybe more like cars than trucks. We were specifically targeting ethanol and biodiesel and doing it with a crop that is not a food crop and can grow almost anywhere in the world. And right, because obviously biofuels are made generally made from corn, right? And so, yeah, tobacco, I mean, it's odd. But what is it about tobacco that makes it a good source for this fuel? Yeah, this is not a typical tobacco plant.

9:42They grow really large. We treated them differently. We grew more per acre. And what was good about it is that tobacco grows in over 100 countries around the world, and we could get good yields per acre. Yeah. And let's just talk about the process for a moment. I mean, it was a hydrothermal process. Can you kind of explain how that worked? Like you chop up, you would basically process dried leaves or I don't know, you took the tobacco plant and did you dry it like they do for cigars or? Yeah, no, nothing like that. We would harvest it fresh. We were using combines to do it, chop it up. The juices when you harvest it, we would press out because those already had high amounts of sugar that we could extract for fermenting into ethanol.

10:30And the remaining biomass we put through this hydrothermal process where we could use water to act like molecular scissors basically to cut down the cellulose into glucose and extract the oil. So you're basically mechanically doing what nature naturally does. Like the oil we use today are plants. We're plants millions of years ago, right? Animals and plants. And so you're essentially doing that, but in a much more expedited way, applying pressure to create a fuel. Exactly. Yeah, where it's a time machine for nature. So a cool idea, and you had been in the Navy, so you knew that there was a lot of interest in biofuels.

11:14But what was the challenge you had? I mean, I've read that you had a hard time raising money, but why? What was the, you know, because you started this in 2012, but why couldn't you attract any investors? What I can now see in retrospect is there are so many compounding risk factors. You had to find farmers willing to grow it. You had to deal with a plant that didn't have any other application. And also the timing was pretty bad. There was a lot of big failures in biofuels in general. And so a lot of the investment community, the venture funds said, look, we can't, our hands are tied. Even if we wanted to, we're not permitted to invest anymore in biofuels.

11:57And so it was a scary time. We could see, as I say, the end of the earth, our runway getting smaller and smaller. And we had to quickly scramble to find new applications. But you had this process that you were working on. And so, by the way, how are you financing the process with no investment capital? We were creative. Joke, we make one plus one equal five all the time. But we did have some investment from individuals, high net worth individuals. And we had millions of dollars of grants from the Virginia Tobacco Commission, for example. So that allowed us to develop this technology, which is now the bedrock of CERC.

12:38Right. From what I understand, you were essentially turning the pulp from tobacco stocks to paper. Yeah, that was one of the iterations. Great research there. Yeah, we were looking at just continuing with tobacco. And so we looked at how to apply that hydrothermal know-how to make non-tree pulp for packaging, paper, you name it. And it turns out the highest or one of the highest qualities of pulp or cellulose goes into clothing, about 300 million trees a year. And that's when a Swedish trading company, they traded primarily in paper and pulp, but they also had a recycling business. And they were the ones that suggested we try running some old T-shirts through our process to see if we could recover anything.

13:23And it worked. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Peter changes course transforming his biofuel company into one that recycles textiles. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

13:42Some of my best trips have been on Airbnb because you get space, privacy, and the feeling of actually being part of the neighborhood, not just passing through. You can spread out with friends, share meals around a table, or just relax in the living room instead of a lobby. And it's not just about the homes. Airbnb experiences have been some of the most memorable things I've done while traveling. In fact, I've had so much fun that I decided to host my own original Airbnb experience in San Francisco this month. It's designed to help you think about your next big move in your career or in your life.

14:22If you want to check it out, head to Airbnb.com slash guy. Ever had one of those afternoons where your brain just quits on you? You're sluggish, hangry, maybe even a little foggy. What if it's your glucose? See, glucose is an energy currency for your mind and body. When it's stable, you're on point. When it crashes, so can you. That's why Lingo is so interesting. Lingo is a glucose wearable designed to help you connect the dots between your glucose and what you eat, how you move, and how you feel. It shows your glucose data in real time. Instead of guessing, you see the impact of your choices.

15:00Maybe that healthy snack is actually sending your glucose on a roller coaster. Or that afternoon walk is the perfect stabilizer. It's about unlocking your consistent best all day long by truly understanding your body's unique responses. Get to know your glucose and learn about how to build healthy habits that work for you with Lingo, designed for you by Abbott. Through November 30th, use code GUY10 on hellolingo.com to get 10 % off a Lingo plan purchase, one use per customer. This offer cannot be combined with other offers, US, Puerto Rico, and UK only. The Lingo Glucosystem is for users 18 years and older, not on insulin.

15:40It is not intended for diagnosis of diseases, including diabetes. Individual responses may vary. We all have moments when we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.

16:19Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Peter Majoranovsky, who back in 2016 discovered a way to break down and reuse cotton and polyester. So, okay, so you start experimenting with this, and you see that it's successful. You can actually take a shirt, and you can actually shred it up, and what? I mean, they didn't just want like a bag stuffed with like shredded cotton. What did you give them? What did you deliver to them? We gave them a high purity cellulose or a high purity pulp that could go at the very beginning of the supply chain to make fibers like viscose, rayon or lyosil.

17:02So we had two streams coming out of our process. We had the high-purity cellulose, or pulp, but we also had the building blocks of polyester, which traditionally come from oil and gas industry. All right. So once this happened, I mean, was it clear at that point that you were going to pivot away from biofuels and tobacco? Not quite. We were trying a bunch of things. We were throwing basically spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick so we could continue on as a company. And when we figured out the textile recycling, we didn't honestly think it was solving a big problem. We didn't know at the time.

17:42And then we started immediately researching thanks to Google and other resources and saw that it was a really big problem. This was a huge problem because obviously the fashion industry accounts for a significant percentage of carbon emissions and pollution in rivers and oceans. I think up to 20 % of the world's wastewater comes from the fashion industry. And then just a small percentage of clothing is recycled. So you were being contacted by manufacturers who were like, how do we use more recycled materials in our clothing? By manufacturers, but also brands. One of our first cold calls was from Patagonia.

18:26And they have a take-back program where you can come in with a Patagonia garment that's used. It doesn't matter how old. It'll give you some value for it. And then they try to resell it. Or they'll even try to repair it to resell it. But if they can't repair it and resell it, they've been warehousing it. So they had this big problem of warehouses full of end-of-use clothing that needed to be recycled. And so that was what drove that phone call. Yeah. So, okay. So you were contacted by Patagonia first and then eventually others. And they wanted to know, can you do this at scale? So I have to imagine to do it at scale, you have to really raise serious money to make that happen.

19:11Serious, serious money. Yeah, a lot of people wanted to know when they could start sending truckloads over, when they could start buying recycled material. And we're still on that path. Yeah, it is very capital intensive. We're talking about significant chemical engineering processes. So let's talk about how this works. just a small percentage of clothing is recycled. Less than 1%. Less than 1 % globally. The idea is let's figure out how we can get more stuff to you guys so you can recycle it or help us recycle it. Let's talk about your process first. I think most of the t-shirts come in or the articles of clothing that come in are polycotton.

19:53So they're like a combination of cotton and polyester, right? That's right. Okay. And then you essentially are doing what with that article of clothing? So we shred it, put it through our process. That strips out the dyes and other finishing chemistry. And what we're left is with a very high purity cotton cellulose and those polyester building blocks that can be used for making new clothing. So you can take a t-shirt, a polycotton shirt, put it through your process as hydrothermal reactions, basically pressure, water, heat. But then how do you separate the cotton from the polyester in that shirt?

20:31It's all intertwined. That's right. That's the beauty of it. When you reverse the reaction of making polyester, you're breaking it down to its original building blocks, and those building blocks dissolve into water. So essentially, you're dissolving away the polyester and also separating it away from the cotton. So now you have a solid stream with the cotton and a liquid stream with the polyester building blocks. Wow. All right. So you basically can take a poly cotton t-shirt and essentially melt away the plastic, the polyester. You're left with white cotton because you've removed the dyes and it gets shredded up and then that can essentially be turned into thread to make new t-shirts.

21:14Exactly. How many cycles can a piece of clothing go through before you can't recycle it any longer? Yeah. So whenever you have a chemical engineering process, you always have a little bit of loss from just material handling and things like that. But the polyester can get repolymerized and unpolymerized back and forth essentially infinitely. I remember when my children were babies, we decided to use cotton diapers for them because I just hated the idea of throwing away diapers and just seeing piles of just diapers in a landfill. So we got out of service. They'd pick up cotton diapers every week and then bring back fresh cotton diapers.

21:58It was great. But still, it's water intensive. It requires a lot of bleach, right? And the service was doing that. I have to imagine this process still requires a lot of water. It does, but we recycle over 90 % of it back into the beginning of the process. How do you do that? A lot of chemical engineering, a lot of water treatment. We're doing filtration steps to remove the dyes and other finishing chemistry so that we can then use that water again. Huh. All right. So essentially, there is, I think I'm right in saying this, there is more than enough clothing in the world to continue to recycle and to continue to make new clothing.

22:43Is that right? The premise is today there are enough pieces of clothing that are not recycled that if they were recycled, we could just use that. We wouldn't have to make, we wouldn't have to get virgin cotton or virgin plastic. Absolutely. We believe we have all the clothes we need to make all the clothes we'll ever need. And when you look at the scale of this industry, it's massive. And a lot of it ends up in landfill within a year or two. And so there's a lot of material there that is in a linear system that really should be recirculated so we can continue to use those resources. We're going to take another quick break.

23:21But when we come back, how Peter turned polycotton recycling into a growing business and his thoughts on fashion's looming reckoning with sustainability. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

23:40As a founder, you're moving fast toward product market fit, your next round or your first big enterprise deal. But with AI accelerating how quickly startups build and ship, security expectations are higher, earlier than ever. Getting security and compliance right can unlock growth or, if you wait too long, stall it. With deep integrations and automated workflows built for fast-moving teams, Vanta gets you audit-ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models, infrastructure, and customers evolve. Fast-growing startups like Langchain, Writer, and Cursor trusted Vanta to build a scalable foundation from the start.

24:25I love that over 10 ,000 companies from startups to huge enterprises trust Vanta because it makes me trust them. Go to vanta.com slash built to save$1 ,000 today through the Vanta for Startups program and join over 10 ,000 ambitious companies already scaling with Vanta. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash built to save a thousand dollars for a limited time. It seems like every day we hear about how AI is coming for our jobs and people are getting anxious and fearful. But a recent survey from Miro reveals that 76 % of us believe that AI can actually benefit their role, while 54 % struggle to know when to use it.

25:13Well, enter Miro's Innovation Workspace. It's an intelligent platform that brings people and AI together in a shared space to get great work done. Miro has been empowering teams to transform bold ideas into the next big thing for over a decade. We've recently started a new project using Miro, and it's a really awesome creative partner. It helps us develop better processes for organizing. It even generates new ideas. You don't have to be an AI master or toggle to yet another tool. the work you're already doing on Miro's canvas is the prompt. Help your teams get great done with Miro. Check out Miro.com to find out how.

25:55That's M-I-R-O dot com.

26:09Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guest today is Peter Majoronoski, co-founder and CEO of Cirque. Okay, so now you've got the technology down and you've got brands. I believe Zara, for example, is already working with you and already has a few articles of clothing that have been made from recycled material. Tell me a little bit about how you source all of the clothing. Because as you say, only 1 % of clothing in the world is recycled. So is it, you know, when you go into a Zara or an H &M, I think a lot of them have like bins where you can just drop things off. But that's still just a fraction of it.

26:55Where are you getting the stuff from? A combination of sources and unfortunately for the planet, but fortunately for business, there's no lack of input material. we get a lot of material from cut and sew factories to make a shirt it takes about another shirt worth of waste along that whole supply chain to to produce it and most of it is that that final step when you're cutting patterns discarding just discarding the the textiles from what you're not using the t-shirt exactly about 15 hits the factory floor and so that's a very good source for waste as other solutions are scaling in terms of how do we collect from households, sort, and get those to providers or recyclers like us.

27:44There's also a whole nother class. There's uniform companies, for example, that process a lot of uniforms. They're essentially big laundries. They're constantly washing things. And there's a significant amount that can't be put back into use. And they're landfilling that right now. Also, hospitals use a lot of textiles. Law enforcement uses a lot of textiles. Universities do. So those are all great sources of post-consumer waste that doesn't necessarily have to come from a household. I mean, it seems like that's, but that seems like another business entirely. We had TerraCycle on the show a couple of weeks ago, and they obviously have a really robust network of collecting waste.