If there was one takeaway from the SJ x Rivet sustainability conference in Los Angeles last week, it’s to be like the pig.
It’s like the old joke about eggs and bacon, Amelia Eleiter, co-founder and CEO of textile reuse and recycling firm Debrand , said at the closing panel on designing for circularity. “The chicken is involved and the pig is committed,” she said.
Like all good stories, Debrand’s started on a beach after one too many beers. Eleiter was surfacing from a surf session in southern Sri Lanka when her friend—and now business partner—Wes Baker spotted something on her leg.
“I thought it was seaweed but it was a wrapper from a pop bottle with a brand name on it,” she said. “And we realized that one day this was going to matter. There’s literally waste floating in our ocean that we can identify back to its original manufacturer.”
Eleiter and Baker started Debrand, which they bill as a “next-life logistics” platform for castoff clothing and footwear, as a way not only to challenge brands to be more accountable for what they produce but also to subvert the linear—and in Eleiter’s words, “shortsighted”—take-make-dispose model of consumption. That requires different forms of sorting technology to make sure textile waste achieves its highest and best use. It also requires commitment.