p. Samsara Eco established a partnership with Woolworths late last year, with its infinitely recycled packaging set to be on supermarket shelves in the near future. Woolworths had signed up for 5,000 tonnes of its polyester product late last year. Samsara Eco sources excess waste from other facilities across Australia – thus expanding its library of plastic-eating enzymes. It then breaks down those materials into its core molecules through super enzymes. These core molecules can be used to recreate other materials. Yogendra Dandapure, vice president of raw materials and innovation at Lululemon, said that its collaboration with Samsara Eco provides the brand with the biggest opportunity to meet and exceed its 2030 sustainable product goals. “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,” Dandapure said. There appears to be a growing trend of retailers joining forces with circular economy startups, with Shein recently collaborating with Queen of Raw to access deadstock materials – a move criticised by experts as potentially accelerating its fast-fashion production process.    Growing issue of clothing waste The partnership comes amid surging sales for Lululemon, with the brand using international expansion as a vehicle for further growth.  The company reported revenue figures of US$2 billion – up 24 per cent on Q1 in 2022 – with sales rising by 60 per cent for the year outside of North America. Much of this international growth came from China, with sales up 79 per cent compared to the previous year. The financial results beat the expectations of analysts, with traffic online and in stores up 30 per cent, and its share price rising by 15 per cent last Friday, following the announcement. According to Wedbush analysts, Lululemon’s growth was partly stimulated by product innovation, with the brand recently releasing its first plant-based nylon shirt.  Paul Riley, CEO and founder of Samsara Eco, said that the partnership was a massive milestone for the startup, and would be a significant step towards reaching its goals of recycling 1.5 million tonnes of plastic annually by 2030.. “The ability to infinitely recycle textiles, including nylon, is an essential solution to tackle the enormous challenge of textile waste in the apparel industry,” he said. “Together with Lululemon, Samara Eco is creating enzymatically recycled nylon and accelerating textile-to-textile recycling toward truly circular apparel” Lower impact alternatives Research founder and head of protein engineering at Samsara Eco, Vanessa Vongsouthi told Inside Retail that nylon 6,6 is commonly used by the textile and fashion industry as it is an extremely versatile and resilient material.  However, the downside of this is that it’s difficult to break down and recycle the material effectively. However, through this partnership, she said that Samsara Eco is able to add its polyester fabrics and nylon 66 to its library of enzymes, and supply infinite recycling possibilities while remaining carbon neutral.   “Our process also requires less heat and energy compared to traditional recycling methods,” Vongsouthi said. She explained that its technology provides a pathway for Lululemon – which currently has a “not good enough” ethical ranking on Good on You, and has been dubbed fast-fashion by Your Sustainable Guide – to meet its sustainability goals. Vongsouthi added that there are “zero trade-offs” involved in using Samsara Eco’s technology. “Together, our two companies will create new recycled nylon and polyester made from apparel waste, bringing to life lower-impact alternatives to important materials in the performance apparel industry,” she said. “Using Samsara Eco’s enzymatic recycling process means [Lululemon doesn’t] need to create new plastic again and manufacturers can use the recycled plastic resin as they would brand new plastic. “It will be cleaner for the environment, as you can infinitely recycle it over and over again. This should mean that no extra cost is passed on to the customer, making sustainability easy.” Expanding operations Last year, Samsara Eco raised $56 million in Series A capital funding, with new investors including Breakthrough Victoria, Assembly Climate Capital, and Clean Energy Finance Corporation Innovation among others. According to Vongsouthi, the funding has been used to grow its engineering team, invest in research and development and “get serious about its plans for our first recycling facility.”  The latter, she said, would be up and running in the next few years. She added that the partnership with Woolworths is an important stepping stone in its mission to recycle 1.5 million tonnes of plastic, per year, by 2030. “As we expand our library of plastic-eating enzymes, the opportunity for infinite plastic recycling will continue to grow across all these industries and we’ll never need to produce plastic from fossil fuels again,” she said. “[The Series A raise will] also fund our first commercial facility which we expect will be capable of infinitely recycling 20,000 tonnes of plastic from 2024. We’re also looking into expanding our operations into Europe and North America.”