Lululemon is making a minority investment in Australian start-up Samsara Eco, which uses plastic-eating enzymes to recycle apparel waste. As part of a multi-year partnership, Samsara Eco will work with Lululemon to create new recycled nylon 6.6 and polyester.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The partnership comes six months after Samsara Eco secured $54 million in a Series A backed by Main Sequence, Woolworths Group’s W23 and Breakthrough Victoria, amongst others.
Developed alongside the Australian National University (ANU), Samsara’s technology works by using enzymes to break down plastic (polymer) into its original building blocks – monomers – which can then be used to infinitely recreate brand new plastic.
Paul Riley, CEO and founder of Samsara Eco said, “We’re proud that this partnership is disrupting the apparel industry. The ability to infinitely recycle textiles, including nylon, is an essential solution to tackle the enormous challenge of textile waste in the apparel industry.
“Together with Lululemon, Samara Eco is creating enzymatically recycled nylon and accelerating textile-to-textile recycling toward truly circular apparel. This is a massive milestone as Samsara Eco achieves an environmentally friendly ability to recycle blended textiles including nylon and polyester.”
Yogendra Dandapure, VP raw materials innovation at Lululemon said, “Nylon remains our biggest opportunity to achieve our 2030 sustainable product goals. This partnership demonstrates what’s possible through collective innovation to solve unmet needs.
“Through Samsara Eco’s patented enzymatic process, we’re advancing transforming apparel waste into high quality nylon and polyester, which will help us live into our end-to-end vision of circularity.”
