Editor’s Note: Textile recovery implementation will be featured in sessions at the 2027 Textile Recovery Summit, March 1-3 near Washington, DC. Register now!
As the co-inventor of “the most vetted technology in the entire textiles industry,” Andrea Ferris knows a thing or two about handling doubters.
Ferris, CEO of Intrinsic Advanced Materials and co-creator of CiCLO technology, began work 15 years ago on making polyester and other synthetic fabrics biodegradable. While working for a company that made McDonald’s uniforms in 2012, she researched the environmental impacts of synthetic materials and wondered if there was a more sustainable solution.
“I don’t have a degree in chemistry, but I just had this idea that, OK, if plastic can be biodegradable — and it can, there are a lot of biodegradable plastics out there – why can’t we make biodegradable polyester?” she said. “So we set out to invent it.”
By 2017, Ferris and her team finished work on the CiCLO technology. Their goal was to make an additive for polyester and other materials that retains durability while making the fabric biodegradable in various environments, including seawater, and not inhibiting its recyclability.
Her research into plastic pollution made this a pressing issue for her, and more recent research has backed up what she found. Portland State University researchers found human-made particles, largely plastics, in 99% of seafood samples. Earthday.org says 35% of those oceanic microplastics come from washing synthetic clothing.
Even last decade, Ferris felt the work was ahead of its time. But given the increased focus on plastic pollution and influx of regulations surrounding the textile industry, that work has continued to create converts.
“I think back in 2017, there was maybe little awareness of this as an issue,” she said. “There was more research going on. What are the sources of microfiber, microplastic pollution? And I think that now it’s undeniable that microfibers, microplastics do come from our textiles.”
Regulators are taking notice. California, for one, passed the Responsible Recovery Act, which will require textile manufacturers to fund and operate a statewide recovery and recycling system.
That legislation includes provisions addressing microplastics generated from textiles. Ferris isn’t sure what the law’s details will require, but she said adding materials like CiCLO can help manufacturers mitigate the impact of their products and help ensure compliance. The company is working with a polypropylene formulation, but the bulk of its work is in polyester, from both virgin and recycled feedstocks.
“I think there’s going to be many ways that (microplastics) could be mitigated,” she said. “It can be from product redesign for less shedding … reducing the amount of fibers that wind up in the environment in the first place. And then, hopefully through mitigation efforts, also, for things that will be less persistent when they inevitably leak into the environment.”
The industry is taking notice. CiCLO won the Innovation Stage award at the Textile Recovery Summit this past February in San Diego, chosen by event attendees following a series of presentations. And numerous brands have started using the product.
Although Ferris’ company has dozens of customers putting CiCLO into their materials, and despite numerous third-party verifications, many still aren’t sure how it will work; many corporations take about four years to incorporate the product after getting introduced to it, she said.
“They start suspicious,” she said. “Once it is ‘derisked,’ we get great feedback because we’ve made it easy to implement.”
Implementation can create momentum around ideas such as textile sustainability that is hard to stop, Ferris said. She hopes the expanded attention around textiles and sustainability will help spur other initiatives that will further mitigate pollution-related problems.
“Every branch (of a brand) that we go to, there will be an internal champion there, or sometimes multiple people and it’s a personal thing to them,” she said. “If we know that we’re putting a product out into the environment and we can make something a little bit better, people get really attached to the idea of figuring out how they can do better. So it really comes down to people.”
Stefanie Valentic contributed reporting for this story.
