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Nick Gonios speaks to BlockTexx founder Adrian Jones about his journey from a senior player in the retail space to an entrepreneur with the aim to keep all textiles out of landfill in an act of atonement. We discuss the role of fast fashion and social media in fuelling excessive consumption and why Adrian considers the best form of recycling to be buying second hand. We touch on greenwashing, why the right to repair is so important, and how, when you wear polyester, you are essentially wearing crude oil. Adrian reveals his vision for BlockTexx for the upcoming years, which align perfectly with Circulist’s focus on shifting from mega factories and global supply chains to local distributed networks, micro factories, and micro service centres. Lastly, he leaves us with some words of wisdom that are easy to implement: consider whether you can wear your clothes for longer. Just one small lifestyle decision can go a long way to reduce global textile waste.
Key Points:
Quotes:
“You can accept there’s a problem and then do nothing about it, which is the coward’s way, or you can accept there’s a problem and then you can do something about it, but that involves significant change for yourself.” — Adrian Jones
“Whether we achieve it in our lifetime or not, I don’t know, but our ambition is to keep all textiles out of landfills.” — Adrian Jones
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Adrian Jones on LinkedIn
BlockTexx
Circulist
Circulist Email
Host Nick Gonios
Produced by Jim Lounsbury
Nick Gonios 0:06
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the first Circulist Quest podcast. I'm Nick Gonios and today we're going to be talking with Adrian Jones, founder of Block Texx, a company that is closing the loop on textile waste in the fashion industry.
So how big is the textile waste problem?
According to the recent study by Monash University, about 6000 kilograms of textiles are dumped in landfills in Australia every 10 minutes.
And in the US, the EPA estimates yearly textile waste at over 17 million tonnes.
In this episode, we're going to learn about what led Adrian to transition from self proclaimed 'dyed in the wool' retailer, into co founder of a company that is dedicated to solving the waste problem in the fashion industry. We'll learn about their proprietary technology for reclaiming cotton and polyester and hear about how BlockTexx secured $6 million in a capital raise including a grant of close to 1 million by the Australian Government, as part of its accelerated commercialisation program, showcasing that BlockTexx can make a significant contribution to the fashion model, converting textile waste into a resource.
So, Adrian, thank you for joining me on the Circulist Quest. Now why don't we get started, we've known each other for a while, tell me a bit about your background. And what led you to found BlockTexx.
Adrian Jones 2:01
Sure, Nick, we do go back a bit, don't we? I think we both had a lot more hair then!
My background has always been in the textile and fashion industry. In the UK, I started out after university returning in large retailers like Marks and Spencers. And next, it came through traditional routes through through stores then into buying and then progressed through management. and ended up taking various senior roles and various senior retailers in the UK. I always enjoyed retailing. And I still really enjoyed the whole concept of retailing, move the theatre, the show, I love the technology in it. So I still have a passion for retailing, but moved to Australia about 15 years ago, work from Maya ran borders and Angus and Robertson down here. But two large bookstores, and then we're CEO at APG, and then CEO, Charles Parsons holding. So I sort of done the sort of the corporate routine, I'd started out as a trolley boy. And I'd ended up as the CEO. And I'd got into my late 40s, early 50s. And there was a huge degree of cynicism, entering my life about i'd raise children into young men. And I was thinking is this all I am, I look around the world. And I see a lot of damage being done by my industry. And I decided that I could do one of several things. But it boils down to one or two things you can accept as a problem, and then do nothing about it, which is the coward's way out. Or you can accept as a problem, and you can do something about it. But that involves significant change for yourself. And after long discussions with my wife, I decided that I do the second one. So I left the industry, so to speak. And I set it up with my business partner, Graham Ross, we set up lock techs. And we had a simple view at the start. And we sort of always kept this sort of simple principle of blockchains. And our aim is to keep all textiles out of landfill. Now, whether we achieve that in our lifetime or not, I don't know. But our ambition is to keep all textiles out of landfill. So for me in a simple in a circular way, my journey through into block Tex and building the business that is now blocked x. It's kind of a journey of atonement, because over 30 years of mass retailing both in the UK, Europe and in Australia. Now I've been accountable with my binding teams for hundreds of 1000s if not millions of garments that are no doubt now rotting in landfills somewhere. So for me, it's an act of atonement as well.
Nick Gonios 4:26
Yeah, I can totally appreciate that absolutely come at it from a similar perspective with Circulist, sort of spending the last three decades in sort of the software technology sort of sector, but wanting to be you know, as a teenager, seeing my boys now 16 and 18 wanting to be an industrial designer or an architect, as a teenager, myself and into the computing sector been in for the last 30 years. And seeing that transition from big scale software sitting in boxes, you know, literally physical hardware boxes at retail stores and big 10 items sold at retailers or and it was just so A lot of bloatware and a lot of tin. And it's all transition out into the cloud, so to speak, focusing on usage and value as the business model under the subscription model. So I can resonate as I guide that moment in time as well, Adrian, where, after knowing, yeah, this is my fifth venture. So I sort of have got that entrepreneurial bug, so to speak, as similar to yourself in terms of that retirement side so I can appreciate exactly what what do you, what do you see sort of as the challenges that you're seeing sort of from both supply side and demand side, in the sector across the board, you know, all industries are complicated and complex, right. But the fashion industry just blows me away. In terms of this notion of innovators dilemma, even worse, some of the big brands that sort of Route, then I'd love to get your views and thoughts on both the supply side and the demand side, innovation or behavioural challenges that seem to exist and what needs to change?
Adrian Jones 5:50
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge, a huge subject. And I'll try and keep it sort of in bite sized chunks, because just this subject could be an A, you could do your PhD on this. But I think that if you look at the supply side, the supply side of waste, textiles, surplus textiles coming into the pipeline, that is resource recovery, because we don't call it waste, we see that as resources is huge. I mean, the Advent in the consumer world, the advent of fast fashion over the last 10 years, the growth of very large global brands, h&m, Zara Uniqlo, whilst they themselves consider themselves to be principal brands, and we'll come back to that later, I think the acuity of actions has just led to a load more textiles been in the market. And those textiles are often lower price lower quality, and therefore have a shorter life. So that growth of fast fashion has been a huge contributor. I think the growth of social media has been a huge contributor, which is interesting, because certainly in Australia, on average garments are worn around six times before they are disposed off, which is a very short number six times only, only six times, that's the total age span, if you take the cohort between under 25. And certainly under 21, that number is between naught and one. Because items are bought cheaply, they're often bought for that Instagram shot, and then they don't want to be worn again on Instagram in case one gets whatever one gets on Instagram, I don't really use Instagram. But the growth of social media and the growth of sort of always been the perfect photograph, and therefore can my dress be repeated, that's also been a driver are particularly that younger cohort of excessive consumption. And certain brands have played into that in terms of the prices that they offer and encouraging that huge velocity and churn of start so fast fashion, the growth of social media and people's concerns about am I going to get shamed, if I wear the same outfit twice, all those things have led to a growth in textile consumption well ahead of population growth. So it's not the biggest as populations grow. textile consumption grows also, but the growth of post consumer, textile waste, I clothes has increased dramatically. But textiles are everywhere, you know, we we wear them, of course, but we sit on them. We use them in our cars, we go to hotels and hospitals. And those textiles are everywhere. They're in the curtains, right? In the, in our houses, textiles are everywhere. So the volume of supply is huge. But this isn't all bad news. Because also, I think that generation, which I would just said under 25, I also think they are probably the most aware of the future damage we have been doing to the planet, whether that's through the textile industry or through energy consumption or other problem areas. So I also think that they are the most active and potentially the most educated about the problem. And this is good, because this leads to a change in their demand patterns over time and what they demand of their brands. So I do think that affects the demand side of the equation, because people are saying, I will reward you as a brand if you can demonstrate that you are doing less damage than other brands, you can never claim to do no damage, you have to claim to do less damage. And I think that sort of consumer led response is driving the demand. Now for brands to do more and do better. We can discuss later in it whether those brands are doing enough. But I think the consumer is now driving the change in the market.
Nick Gonios 9:30
You know I'm starting to use a term in a lot of conversation having now that I'm sort of deeply into sort of circling and what we're focusing on and and I've called it it's not a politically correct term to say but I will say it and basically what I talk about is sort of the the green lipstick on the pig. And there seems to be other people are calling and greenwashing mon calling it the green lipstick on the pig which the lipstick being dealing with the symptoms of our economy and so the pig Is the economy right now? Right in its current form, which is so wasteful and inefficient in our two systems overall. And the lipstick is though the green lipstick is actually sort of us thinking that waste and recycling and right to repair and so forth are a sort of first solution that is sort of version one, in my view, right. As you've we've spoken about in the past. In other conversations, I think we need to straddle off into trying to think about reinventing version two, which sort of eliminates a lot of those out of the equation, which is a lot harder, right. But it is interesting to just observe and see somewhat, I've just got some notes here on sort of what some brands had been doing as case studies talking about circularity and circular economy and sustainability. And, you know, h&m obviously has the, you've seen what they've done with their closed loop for textile fibres campaign. And, you know, there's many examples of what they've been doing around trying to have boxes to basically bring back to clothing and all of their stores to, you know, demonstrate that they actually are acting on this, my views are, it's actually great PR on the edge from my point of view, because some of the fundamental challenges are not been solved from a supply chain and systemic point of view. Then on the flip side, you got organisations like muli jeans, that have actually set up repair kits, so you can actually take on and repair your own jeans and extend the life of those products. And they've got repair, now they've got repair service centres across the world that you can go in and take your nudie jeans and get them fixed. And, you know, I've actually got a bit of a challenge on myself with my DVDs. I get a bit of shuffling between losing weight right now. But but this is this is one of the challenges, right? It's sort of how do you deal with you know, the repair side of things. Patagonia has been quite amazing with what they stand for, as well around impact around social environmental causes. And they've launched their amazing amount of footage documentaries, and, and really committing not just sort of doing PR but committing to launching their own us marketplace, which you'd probably have seen as well, and many other activities. And then then we've got all birds, you know, proud sort of local organisations out in New Zealand, it's focused heavily on sustainable materials. And they've launched the carbon footprint labelling sort of platform as well. So that everybody knows is by the labelling, you actually know what carbon footprint is in the shoes that you're wearing, and the other garments. And then the last one that I've been, I've actually been in love with for a while, but haven't seen that it has the future craft R & D Innovation Centre, which is trying to create this sustainable performance running shoe. And they partner with an organisation called carbon 3d that is really, really trying to reinvent the whole approach to designing, producing and recycling and remaking these products. So it there's an intersection of both version one and version two circular economy type of happenings here right now, I'd be interested to get your views like we've been talking about, you're leading on a before with with regards to sort of this movement towards a conscious consumer, right, and sort of conscious consumerism and conscious businesses, recognising environmental and social impact. And I think that's growing ever so slowly. But what do you see in terms of that? And how do we try and find ways to accelerate that?
Adrian Jones 13:07
Again, it's very broad subject and give us some very good examples there. I think. I'm not gonna pick on particular brands, I mean, there's a couple I will mention, but I'm not going to pick on particular brands, I don't think I think the consumers can decide for themselves. But as an X retailer, your primary business model is to push as much stuff out of the front door as possible. That's what you're there to do. You want to clear your head a high high churn of stock at a reasonable gross margin, and push it out the door with minimum discounting, so you can get the next pile of stocking behind it. And the process starts again, let's not glamorise, what we do with our volume shifting business, we just push stuff out of the front door. So when stuff wants to come back in through the front door, it kind of interrupts the business model. It kind of gets in the way, because usually when your trucks leave the back of the store, all they're taking is empty hangers, empty boxes, coat rails, you know. So it's a big thing. And I've had this challenge many times with retailers, because the marketing team loved the idea of doing a take back because it's fantastic that we can do a bounce back voucher, we can get customers to come back in. Oh my God, we can do a brilliant PR. It'll be amazing, darling. So the marketing team just sort of gets so excited by all and then the operations team go. You're having a laugh, aren't you? We're gonna end up with boxes of old clothes at the back of our store. We've then got to move them out. Oh my god. It's amazing that you never see textile collection bins inside the centre. You always see them in the carpark because the landlords and the retailers think that they are dirty they get in a way. It's not what we do. Oh my God is going to make it look like an op shop. And so historically that there's been there's been a lot of barriers for people doing take base games because marketing LOVE IT operations. hate it. So overtime you, you know, you grind the operations peoples down and you persuade them that it's the right thing to do for the planet. And again, we'll try in 10 stores, okay? And then they end up with a big bag of stuff, and I have no idea what's in it. And then they've got to pay to get this collected, and they've got to pay to get it sorted. And then they get it sorted. And then they go, Well, great. So now we know what's in the box. What do we do with it? And historically, there's been very few options for recycling textiles, apart from sell it at the OP shop, or export it. Now, the OPT drops can't cope with the donations, they get themselves and exporting textiles under the sort of rather misconstrued guise of you know, philanthropy is just saying, well, as long as it's not in my landfill, it's okay, you can go into somebody else's landfill, we're not solving the problem by exporting our consumption. So this was kind of the genesis of block Tex, we understand I understand that 80% of the world's fibres are made of blends. Now those blends are really difficult if they can't be sold and reuse and I would advocate reuse every time, every time you can buy something secondhand. Go for your life, the best form of recycling because the carbons already been sunk, and you're just reusing it and repurposing it. If you can repair like you said, and I do applaud Patagonia, nu d, etc. I think repair and the right to repair is really important. I think consumers need to be given the right to repair we all understand the frustration, less so with textiles, but certainly with consumer electronics, when, after 18 months, I recently had a food mixer. After 18 months the food mixer broke, it shouldn't have got the motors gone. Can I get the back of the bloody food mixes to fix the motor? No, no. So I've got to go and buy a food mixer. There's no right for me to repair that food mixer. And so I think repairs are great, the great thing, but then coming back to recycling. The brands historically have said Oh God, we'll do a cake back. we've sorted out but then what do we do with it and there hasn't been an answer. And now companies like block Tex and some companies brilliant companies in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly dealing with Cotton's, we work out we've worked out and we we've invented and we've painted clever ways to actually separate blends. So now there is a solution. Because we can separate those, what we focus on we can separate polyester and cellulosic blends, so your poly cotton t shirts, your poly cotton, your bedsheets etc. We can separate those chemically back into their raw materials. And those raw materials can re enter the industrial supply chain as a raw material to another industry. So this is really important in terms of actually encouraging retailers to do things because historically there hasn't been an onshore solution. But now there is in Australia, the opportunity now for the charities and for retailers who have great logistics to collect stuff. The opportunity is now for them to collect this stuff from consumers. So companies like block Tex can recycle it. And it's companies that can do footwear. There's companies that can do leather. So gather this stuff up, because there's now onshore solutions for these problems that historically didn't have a solution. But we have to have an honest and mature discussion that isn't histrionics, that if we engage in the consumption, if we choose to only wear garments six times if we choose to waste 23 kilos per person per head in Australia, then if we choose that level of consumption, we have to deal with the problem. If we don't want to deal with the problem, we should consume less agree with you 100%.
Nick Gonios 18:57
I might say my mouth, right? Well, it's our problem. Why should we export it under the guise of philanthropy? Yeah, it's shameful and we should not be proud of those type of activities. And it said to be fair, it also not to be fair, but I think consumers have been blindsided from actually what's happened in the the in the life part of things I would say as well. One of the things that's been quite interesting for me with what you've been working on with block text has been exciting, Adrian is the fact that people might think about it recycling to basically create back into textiles again. So basically put back into the fashion sector. One of the things that's quite interesting to me, which caught me and intrigued me was the case study that you guys had as a proof of concept when your early launching into the venture with our leading airline here in Australia, right and what you guys did there and, and sort of what's been the journey to get you guys to where you're at right now and, and the next steps in the block text journey go to going forward?
Adrian Jones 19:50
Yeah, I think it would be inappropriate for me to discuss individual clients, but I'll certainly give some examples which I think because you the point you make though, is really important. The In industry and as an industry I know well, therefore I spent all my life in it, therefore I can comment about it, it tends to have a rather over developed view of itself importance, right. So the textile industry only believes it achieves Nirvana. If it returns things into textiles. You know, because there's only value in textiles, it seems to have this blind spot that textiles have to go to textile, because only then are you a true textile recycler. I really take issue with that, because what most people don't want to realise is that between 50 and 60% of the world's fibre consumption is polyester. polyester is made from oil. So you're essentially you're wearing crude oil. So let's not overly glamorise it, we're essentially wearing clothes made out of crude oil. There's a few steps in the way obviously. And so I think where we have taken the view is that we want to keep textiles out of landfill, and there's a huge supply as we've discussed, we can now convert those textiles back into polyester chips, so little flakes a little bit a little bits of polyester chips, and we can convert that back into a cellulosic powder. So the poly cotton bedsheet becomes polyester chips, and it becomes cellulosic powder. Now both of those are raw materials for the textile industry, but they are also raw materials for many other industries. So what we can demonstrate because our business is also, it's called block text for a reason, the text part is fairly obvious. The block part is probably less obvious, but we built our entire business, our entire supply chain, on a blockchain on an Ethereum blockchain. Oh, wow, I wasn't aware of that. So this allows us to have complete visibility of when we take a product in, we can say this customer gave us this amount of product in this composition on this date. And then through a series of smart contracts on a publicly distributed ledger, we can then say, and on this date, it became a polyester Chipman resulted this business who make park benches or whatever. And so what that has done, it's kept textiles out of landfill. But also we can demonstrate that it's diverted the use of virgin material in the demand side, whether it goes into textiles or not. It doesn't worry as if textile mills want to buy. Let's have it. Let's have that discussion. But it doesn't matter for us because our business produces raw materials for other industries. And so I'm not wedded to it going back into textiles.
Nick Gonios 22:46
It's so exciting. That's great. Adrian, it's very much, Amanda, I've been reading a bit about the theme of the sector, which is called urban mining, and not taking from the ground, but sort of mining from our existing materials and resources that we have one Earth above the earth, so to speak, and above ground, and it seems like blog text is sort of playing a part in as an urban miner, I would say in some sense, would you not say
Adrian Jones 23:10
that? Well, I would totally agree with we we don't call textile waste, you know, we get stuff. And it's a resource. We see ourselves as a converter, we are converting this resource, which is at the end of its useful life in life one, and we are converting it to a raw material that can commence a life in life too. And when it's finished that life, if people want us to, we can recycle again, because the joy of polyester, within a certain parameter, no parameters are fairly broad. You can recycle it many, many times. It isn't a single use polymer, you can recycle it many, many times. And so we see ourselves as converters, we just play a small part in a value chain of converting this product into this product, but then it can be reconverted again. So we don't describe ourselves as waste gatherers. We don't describe ourselves as in the destruction. We even don't describe ourselves often as recyclers. We describe ourselves as converters. And that's what we are.
Nick Gonios 24:09
So you're actually at a certain point right now where you guys have kicked off the building of your plant up in Queensland, which is going to be quite exciting. Hopefully, you were the first one of many internationally, from my point of view, in order for us to be impactful. I'd be so proud of you guys sort of doing it in you know, many, many parts around the world. Where are you guys at? And sort of what is the plan of attack right now for the next sort of 12 to 24 months?
Adrian Jones 24:29
Yeah, we were successful in fundraising this year, as you said, we got some money out of federal government and state government and a local high net worth individual and his life invested privately in our business. And I think that's a great step. You know, without them, we wouldn't have got there and I think it's a great bit a great example of people putting their money where their mouth is and actually living their principles. With the backing of that we're now building our first facility but also a world first facility of this scale. So our first Phase One of this plant will do about 3800 tonnes of input. And then we will scale that to about nine months, let's call it 10,000 tonnes in this first plant, and that will be within the first probably 18 months. And we're building that now. We've got engineers on site, we've actually got a 4000 square metre facility. And yeah, we're very exciting. We're actually sort of, you know, last week, we bought by the first significant capital investment in a very large bat extruder, which is a very important a very large piece of kit. So you see, you saw shiny first big check, you're like, Oh, my God, this was a hobby that got out of control. And then after that, we will then build another probably another 50,000 term facility in Australia. And we'll discuss that with various state governments. And then after that, our view would be probably to licence the technology overseas. With the right partners overseas, we believe that our solution should go to the problem. And whilst we have a million turn, textile waste textile disposal problem in Australia, you compare that to other markets, and it's still fairly small. I think BCG estimate that by 2030, there'll be 140 million tonnes of textile waste. globally. It's an enormous number. And so our solution should therefore go to the problem. And that's it. So that's, that's probably our next five years build one, build bigger in Australia, and then keep those as wholly owned, block Tex facilities where we can also do our own continue to develop our research, but there's a lot more stuff we want to do. And then scale by actually licencing the technology overseas.
Nick Gonios 26:45
That's exciting, Adrian, I'm so proud of what you guys are up to, it's so good to see a doing it out a part of the world and sort of going after some of these global, what we call our what we're calling is circular sort of greenshot missions. And I think you fit into one of those quite well in the, in the fashion sort of sector right now. So I'm so excited for what you're doing. And as I see, also, being a circus member in our community, I'm really proud of you being part of it, as well. And what I would like to congratulate it on like is we've known each other for a while, it's just amazing to see to be able to be working on stuff that's going to be so impactful in the world. And I'm just recognising that, you know, it's just some amazing world leading stuff that's been developed by what you guys are doing. And I wish you guys all the success and I'm keen to participate and contribute where we can. One of the important aspects from from a circulus mindset is very much to focus on moving away from Mega factories and global supply chains, and shifting towards as fast as we can to local distributed networks of micro factories and micro service centres in some ways, in everything that we do from that perspective. And I think you guys are on the track to try and hopefully build out sort of these, in my view, a constellation of these sort of miniature service oriented waste conversion plants I don't I'm trying to be respectful of the language, you're not calling it waste, or recycling and so forth. But these conversion plants that compel the next generation of up and coming mission oriented entrepreneurs and ventures that are going to doing good in the world. So are there any sort of last sort of words that you wanted to share while we're on?
Adrian Jones 28:18
No, it's been a pleasure sharing a little bit of our journey at block Tex, I would encourage people to just think about their consumption. I don't subscribe to the point of view that just buy more expensive clothes and wear them for longer. I think that's a very economically snobbish argument. I would encourage every consumer, just to think about Can I wear this garment longer? Can I repair this garment? I think everybody would like to shop at Patagonia. A brand I have a huge respect for. But not everybody can afford to shop at Patagonia. But that doesn't mean they don't care for the planet. And I would encourage everybody just to make one small decision, do I need that extra t shirt? Can I make this last longer? Can I repair this pair of jeans, and that will actually go a long way to solving the hundreds of 1000s of tonnes of textile waste problem we have only in Australia, and millions of times global.
Nick Gonios 29:11
Exciting times ahead, Adrian.
Thank you so much for joining us on the first Circulist Quest podcast. And we'll have you back on the show sometime soon on the journey to see where you guys are at in terms of once the you know the progress of the plant and operationalising and ultimately sharing with us some impact measures and some real numbers in terms of being impactful in the market. And to see what you've learned along the way. It's the whole purpose of our of our quest podcast series. For everyone that's listening and watching. You could read more about block Tex and follow the journey on the website at blocktexx.com - that's blocktexx.com.
At the Circulist Quest we're always interested in stories about entrepreneurs, designers, engineers and scientists who are helping to accelerate the shift to the circular economy. If you now have someone we just have to talk to, or have any questions about the technology we're developing to help product manufacturers close the loop visit our website at circular start org or write to us at media at circulist.org
