Nike just inked back-to-back deals for future supplies of circular polyester in its mainstream athletic wear. The Beaverton, Oregon, brand is betting that it can make good use of polyester recycled from castoff fabrics in more than pilot programs and one-off collections.

On Nov. 10, Nike shared plans to become the “anchor” customer for recycled-textile polyester resin from Loop Industries of Quebec. The next day, Swedish recycling startup Syre announced that it will become the “lead strategic supplier” of circular polyester for Nike.

The partnerships reflect a vote of confidence in emerging textile-to-textile recycling technologies, a crowded space that is seeing fierce competition and, recently, a steady series of brand contracts.

Nevertheless, the companies providing the material don’t yet have operational plants. In fact, the site for Syre’s factory in Vietnam has not yet been announced. Loop Industries’ facility in a petrochemicals investment region of India is scheduled to open in 2027.

“Our partnership with Syre represents a shift in our materials strategy and how we source,” said Sitora Muzafarova, vice president of materials supply chain, in a release. “Innovation is at the heart of Nike’s DNA, and textile-to-textile recycled polyester is essential in our ambition to design and produce breakthrough products that both perform to the highest standards that our athletes expect and are more sustainable at the same time.”

Materials and emissions goals

Nike has science-based targets for 2030 to slash Scopes 1 and 2 emissions by 65 percent and Scope 3 by 30 percent, all relative to a 2015 baseline. Lessening the impacts of polyester, Nike’s staple material, is important for reducing its carbon footprint, 34 percent of which came from raw materials in 2024. The company used 183,619 metric tons of polyester by volume last year, two thirds recycled.

The sneaker colossus reached 48 percent “environmentally preferred” materials last year, closing in on a goal of 50 percent for 2025. That would deliver half a million metric tons of Scope 3 emissions reductions. Recycled polyester is among those materials, as is cotton that’s organic, recycled or certified to third-party standards.

The latest deals mark a diversification of suppliers and a gradual shift away from beverage bottles as a polyester source. Nike has kept 3 billion plastic bottles out of the environment by purchasing bottle-to-textile-recycled Repreve material, according to producer UNIFI of North Carolina. 

Nike was an early adopter of recycled polyester when waste-bottle sources were in vogue. At the Sydney Olympics 25 years ago, it featured the Stand-Off singlet, a textured shirt of single-material recycled polyester. Ten years ago, Nike said it was the industry’s top user of recycled polyester, with non-virgin content in 39 percent of its garments.

The tech

Syre and Loop Industries each use chemical recycling to break apart long-chain polyester molecules, which are later rebuilt into pellets that are spun into polyester yarn.

Syre has taken the approach of planning a global network of recycling plants for resin or yarn, and de-risking by signing major offtake agreements with brands. In an analysis undertaken with McKinsey, Syre projected that it can provide 3 percent of the future market for recycled polyester.

The company formed in early 2024 in a joint partnership with H&M Group, which agreed to purchase $600 million of its recycled material over seven years. In June, Syre signed up Gap, Houdini and Target as “launch partners.” 

”This is not a one-off initiative or capsule collection; this is a moment when circular materials move from concept to commercial reality at scale and wider adoption,” Syre CEO Dennis Nobelius said of the Nike deal, expressing the desire for circularity to become “the new normal.” 

Loop Industries creates Twist resin that’s meant to drop into existing manufacturing processes. The company says its Infinite Loop technology turns mixed polyester waste into virgin-quality material. Nike would obtain materials from a facility Loop is planning with Ester Industries. The output would offer an 81 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared with virgin polyester.

Loop, which has been NASDAQ listed since 2015, also has agreements to provide recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging resin for L’Oréal and Danone. Branching further into fashion, it has recently collaborated with yarn experts Hyosung TNC of South Korea and Shinkong Synthetic Fibers of Taiwan.

The next-gen material space is progressing in fits and starts, with polyester recyclers appearing to make more progress than those brokering in natural fibers.

For example, REI of Sumner, Washington, signed an offtake agreement on Oct. 28 to purchase Cycora, the textile-to-textile material created by Los Angeles startup Ambercycle. The Danville, Virginia, company Circ is unique for creating both synthetic and cellulose-based output from recycling mixed polyester-cotton waste. On Oct. 14, it announced a collaboration with H&M and fiber giant Lenzing Group.

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Patagonia needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 10 percent each year to reach its commitment to be net zero by 2040. 

Like most other apparel makers, it’s struggling to deliver on that promise in a global economy complicated by trade wars and shifting ESG regulations. 

For its 2025 fiscal year ended April 30, the 52-year-old, storied outdoor gear and apparel maker’s footprint rose 1 percent to 182,159 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

The big reason for the year-over-year rise: “more carbon-intensive” materials in new duffels and packs, which were a larger part of its product assortment, the company said in its first comprehensive environmental and social progress report published Nov. 12.

Raw materials and finished goods manufacturing accounted for 92 percent of Patagonia’s footprint in fiscal year 2025, according to the 130-page narrative, which pulls together disclosures that the Ventura, California, company makes on its website, through certification audits and to nonprofits. 

Patagonia, which had revenue of $1.5 billion in FY2025, compiled the information so employees, customers and suppliers could learn more about the evolving best practices that it uses to reduce emissions. Since its 2017 baseline year, Patagonia’s emissions are up about 19 percent. 

Unique perspective

As a private company, Patagonia isn’t required to report its climate progress, but the company’s leadership felt it important to counter the rise of greenhushing and to demonstrate that companies should still talk about their work. It hasn’t committed to a publishing cadence. 

“Patagonia is not perfect by any means,” Founder and ex-CEO Yvon Chouinard, now 87, said in a note leading the “Work in Progress” report. “We do not have all the answers, but the fear of getting things wrong in the process cannot stop us from trying to get things right in the end.”

The company’s near-term targets include reducing emissions from its direct operations and purchased electricity by 80 percent by 2030, compared with 2017. Patagonia has pledged to cut absolute emissions from its supply chain by 55 percent in that same timeframe. 

Chouinard, along with current CEO Ryan Gellert, oversees Patagonia’s climate strategy and approves long-term, multimillion-dollar decarbonization investments. Patagonia is organized under a unique ownership structure: the Patagonia Purpose Trust owns the voting stock (2 percent) with the rest held by Holdfast Collective, an environmental nonprofit that has received $180 million in dividends since it was created in 2022. 

Source: Patagonia

Progress: It’s complicated

Patagonia gives itself passing grades on two of four 2025 environmental goals in the report: eliminating “forever” chemicals from its fabrics and buying 100 percent of materials from “preferred” sources certified as having reduced climate impacts.

It reached 84.4 percent overall for the latter goal, but made particular progress on using recycled polyester (93 percent) and nylon (89 percent), which significantly reduced the company’s dependence on products made from fossil fuels.

Patagonia measures every product using its proprietary Ironclad Quality Index, which evaluates design metrics such as how materials can reduce environmental impact; manufacturing indicators, in an effort to minimize defects that cause returns; and use factors such as durability.

“Responsibly made high-quality products that are multifunctional, durable and repairable can be used for years and years,” the company said in the report. “As a result, they reduce waste and take full advantage of valuable resources already extracted. Quality, for us, is an environmental attribute.”

For example, Patagonia’s Black Hole Duffel has a score of 9.3 (out of 10), compared with a score of 7.2 in 2016. One reason was a decision to replace a thermoplastic polyurethane made from virgin petroleum with a recycled material that had the same qualities but had a matte finish instead of a shiny one. The potential risk to sales was worth it, the company said.

Supply chain: the path forward

The report also outlines several new initiatives intended to encourage more direct action on decarbonization in Patagonia’s supply chain — which contributed 95 percent of its emissions in FY2025. They include:

• A pilot of a new carbon accounting approach that would allow Patagonia to get credit for investments it funds for suppliers, such as electrification, that reduce emissions.
• The use of an internal fee — called the Verified Carbon Intervention Unit — that calculates the price of emissions reduction measures and factors this into contracts with Patagonia’s 10 biggest partners. This represented a $37.3 million operational expense in FY2025.
• A policy that requires suppliers to write a coal-phaseout plan and share the timeline.
• A “no carbon offset” mandate that applies both to employees and partners.
• An environmental impact manual that lays out compliance requirements for its supply chain; new suppliers must pass a related screening process during their onboarding.

Untapped potential: Product recycling and reuse

The analysis is rife with contradictions, including high hopes for plans to recirculate and reuse materials even though there is no clear recycling pathway for at least 85 percent of its products.

For example, a typical rain jacket could include at least three different fabrics bonded together with adhesive.

Just 1 percent of the products Patagonia has ever made have been returned for recycling. Just 20 percent of those can be processed; the rest are being stored “indefinitely” until Patagonia can figure out what to do with the items. This requires an industry-level response, the company said.

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A carbon credit buyers coalition designed to channel funds to high-integrity nature-based solutions has announced its first deals. 

Google and McKinsey said late last week that they would purchase a combined 215,000 tons of carbon removal credits from Mombak, a Brazilian company that is reforesting degrading land in the Amazon. The purchase is a second vote of confidence for the project developer, which last year announced a 1.5 million-credit deal with Microsoft.

The recent deal was facilitated by the Symbiosis Coalition, a buyers’ coalition formed last year with the goal of securing commitments for 20 million tons of nature-based removal credits. REI and Bain were announced as new members last week, joining existing participants Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce. 

Due diligence

The Mombak deal is the first to emerge from the coalition’s review of the 185 responses from 40 countries that it received after issuing a request for proposals around a year ago. The project passed muster because of its commitment to create a resilient forest populated by a high proportion of native species, a model designed to keep carbon locked up for at least 100 years.

The project also addresses a consequence that has undermined other reforestation schemes: that protecting land causes activities taking place on it, such as cattle grazing, to move to nearby undeveloped spaces, which only prompts further deforestation. Mombak will tackle that risk, known as “leakage,” through low-interest loans that enable ranchers to intensify existing operations and absorb displaced grazing activity.

Google had already purchased 50,000 credits from Mombak, but the due diligence carried out by Symbiosis helped convince the tech giant to contract for another 200,000, said Randy Spock, the company’s carbon credits and removals lead.

“The ability of Symbiosis to gather as much data as possible about nature restoration projects and then put all those projects up against a common yardstick of what meticulously accurate measurements ought to look like, according to the latest science, is a huge value to the field,” he added.

The price of the credits was not revealed, but for a previous deal, announced in 2023, Mombak stated that credits cost more than $50 per ton.

Google’s portfolio

The purchase further diversifies Google’s credit portfolio. The company signed 16 deals in 2024 for a total of 730,000 removal credits at a cost of more than $100 million. The largest was for close to 220,000 tons from Terradot, a startup that spreads crushed rocks on farmland, which then react with rainwater and release fertilizing minerals and capture carbon dioxide. Earlier this year, Google said it would purchase credits equivalent to 1 million tons of CO2 from projects that prevent the release of methane and hydrofluorocarbons, two highly potent greenhouse gases. 

Google’s most recent environmental report notes that it did not apply any credits to its emissions inventory in 2024 but plans to do so starting in 2030, the year it has targeted for reaching net zero. 

Hitting that target will likely require Google to retire millions of credits annually. The portion of the company’s footprint covered by its net-zero target reached 11 million tons in 2024, a rise of more than 50 percent since 2019. Like its rival Microsoft, which plans to retire millions of credits annually to hit a 2030 carbon-negative target, Google’s purchases are driven in part by the need to counter increasing emissions from the data centers that power AI services.

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Three large apparel trade groups have formed an organization that, if chosen by the state of California, could serve as the operational backbone for the first law in the U.S. that mandates the management of textile waste.

On Nov. 3, the Textile Renewal Alliance (TRA) announced its creation along with its bid to help execute California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act by serving as the producer responsibility organization (PRO). The nonprofit alliance comprises the National Retail Federation, the California Retailers Association and the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

The extended producer responsibility (EPR) law, which took effect in January, establishes that brands deal with the post-consumer journeys of their used clothing, shoes, handbags, bedding, curtains and other textiles. Toward that end, it will tab a PRO to coordinate material repair, reuse or recycling, as well as register textile producers, collect fees, establish collection networks and report progress to the state.

Last year, the apparel industry produced 120 million metric tons of waste, an amount that could shoot up by another 30 million metric tons within five years, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

A bid for PRO status

By January 1, 2026, California will begin to take applications from bodies interested in the role of overseeing PRO; the state’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, nicknamed CalRecycle, will make the selection in March. By next July, companies selling or importing textiles in California will need to join the approved PRO.

The PRO will have until 2030 to put a stewardship plan in place, and in 2032, CalRecycle will be able to tweak how the law is executed.

Months away from the CalRecycle decision, the new alliance is promoting itself as being able to leverage members’ intimate industry knowledge and resources to reduce waste at scale. Those entities also have incentives to comply with the EPR law.

“The National Retail Federation is working with our industry partners, producers and stakeholders in California to strengthen infrastructure for managing textiles in the state,” said Stephanie  Martz, the National Retail Federation’s chief administrative officer and general counsel, in a statement about the alliance’s launch. “Through TRA, we’re striving to create a producer‑led stewardship system where textiles are used, reused and recycled responsibly and thoughtfully.”

The D.C.-based National Retail Federation has more than 16,000 members and a board with executives from Walmart, Target and Levi Strauss. The Sacramento-based California Retailers Association represents a wide range of retailers. The D.C.-based American Apparel and Footwear Association includes more than 1,100 brand members and a board filled in part by Ralph Lauren, New Balance Athletics and Carhartt.

At the moment, at least one other group is seeking to become the PRO. The Landbell Group, based in Mainz, Germany, already manages 42 producer responsibility organizations in 18 countries. In the Netherlands, it has managed more than 18,700 tons of used textiles since January. 

“Our extensive background in managing multiple PROs around the world and our specific expertise in managing and developing textile PROs puts us in a unique position” to do the same in California,” said John Hayes, Landbell’s president.

Execution of EPR

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and other nonprofits have rallied around EPR rules, which are also rolling out across the European Union. They see the Golden State’s legislation as crucial to managing spent materials, ideally after reuse and waste prevention have been exhausted.

The “producer‑led stewardship” pitch of the TRA, though, worries some sustainability advocates, who wonder if the same industry groups that generate textile waste should be responsible for managing it.

The new textile law is similar to California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act which was signed in 2022. In that case, the state-designated PRO is the Circular Action Alliance, whose board includes retail, consumer brands and packaging leaders such as Amazon, Coca-Cola and Target.

Best-case scenario, California’s textile EPR law will become a blueprint for the rest of the country, said Teresa Milio Birge, state policy manager of American Circular Textiles, a Brooklyn nonprofit that lobbies for fashion industry regulation. (Its members include brands H&M and Reformation; secondhand retailers eBay, ThredUp and Vestiaire Collective; and textile recycling startups.) And that means the TRA, or whichever group is ultimately chosen, could find itself in position to serve other states who pass EPR laws in the future. Currently, bills are brewing in New York and Washington State.

“While Textile Renewal Alliance is only one organization vying for PRO designation, it’s important to consider that this nonprofit has been established by three trade associations,” she said. “We are eager to see how the position of these associations may be considered, especially as governance is put into practice.”

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Startups and large corporations may seem like natural allies in tackling the climate crisis. One has ideas; the other has scale. Yet when they try to work together — as pilot partners, customers, investors or acquirers — the relationships often sputter.

At the Climate Tech Commercialization Forum at last month’s Trellis Impact 25, entrepreneurs, investors and corporate sustainability leaders wrestled with the why of that — and, more importantly, how to fix it. The technologies needed to decarbonize the economy mostly exist, said moderator Jake Mitchell, who leads climate tech innovation at Trellis Group. “So the challenge isn’t invention — it’s integration.”

The forum, now in its second year, focused squarely on smoothing the friction that prevents promising technologies from scaling. This year’s “friction buckets,” chosen by advisors representing both startups and large companies, were “culture” and “communication” — the two variables most within human control.

When strengths become liabilities

Startups are built atop bold vision, speed and risk-taking; corporations thrive on structure, consistency and scale. Each party’s strengths can cripple collaboration if unchecked. A startup’s big-picture thinking can become overpromising. A corporate’s discipline can crush creativity. Each side’s superpower can be a blind spot.

“Startups and corporations have entirely different business models for innovation,” said Rob Shelton, innovation consultant and mentor at Harvard’s Innovation Lab.

Startups win by moving fast, proving product–market fit and adapting constantly — “shape-shifting,” as Shelton put it. Corporations, by contrast, depend on governance, predictability and risk control. “Neither side fully understands what the other is trying to do,” he said. “That shows up in decision speed, resource allocation, even hiring approvals.”

His prescription: candor. “Be honest about your business model and your biases. Every organization has them — rooted in history, culture and risk tolerance. Name them, and you can start to work through them.”

Alternative pathways — and better pitches

A panel featuring Shelton, Leila Madrone of Activate and Carrie Davis of Third Derivative explored how founders can bridge that gap.

Activate’s nonprofit fellowship helps “hard-tech” scientists — those working with molecules, machines and materials rather than code — become entrepreneurs. Madrone, a robotics engineer who spent 12 years running her own energy startup, described how venture capital’s pressure for 10- to 20-fold returns often derails climate hardware companies.

“The VC model rewards hype,” she said. “But corporate partnerships can be faster, more pragmatic routes to profitability — and to impact.”

Davis, whose accelerator builds ecosystems that link investors, corporations and startups, observed that midsize companies are often better partners than Fortune 500 giants. “They’re hungrier,” she said. “They can move faster and actually tell the story publicly, which helps startups build credibility.”

When pitching corporations, the panelists agreed, founders must change their language. “VCs want disruption,” said Madrone. “Corporates want amplification. They want to strengthen what already works.” 

“Don’t promise growth; promise advantage,” advised Shelton. “Show how you’ll help them commercialize faster and cheaper than they could themselves.”

Proof, not promises

If culture and communication are the sources of friction, trust is the lubricant. Michelle Ruiz, CEO of Hyfé, a startup that turns food waste into specialty chemicals, described how her team built that trust through “stage-gating”: dividing their commercialization roadmap into small, low-risk steps.

Rather than proposing massive joint ventures up front, Hyfé begins with gram-scale samples, then pilot projects at kilogram scale, and only later at full production. “Each stage-gate gives both sides a chance to ask: Do we still feel comfortable? Is the business case clear?” Ruiz said. That approach, she added, “translates ‘move fast and break things’ into ‘move smart and build trust.’”

Inside a working partnership

A case study of Upstream Tech and ENGIE New Ventures showed how patience and persistence pay off.

Upstream, a 30-person software company that uses AI to forecast river flows, began working with ENGIE’s hydropower division in 2019, landing a commercial contract a year later and a corporate investment in 2023. Yet progress was slow.

“We had miscommunications, translation issues, budget cycles that seemed endless,” recalled Shiraz Haji, a climate tech veteran who serves as senior advisor to ENGIE. “But Eve Ratliff and her team at Upstream stayed patient. They understood that inside a 100,000-person company, timing isn’t just about enthusiasm.”

Ratliff said having an internal champion like Haji was indispensable. “He knows who talks to whom and how decisions actually get made,” she said. “That’s intelligence you can’t get from a website org chart.”

Upstream initially emphasized that its forecasts were more accurate — “a technical brag,” Ratliff called it. It didn’t resonate. The company eventually built an ROI calculator to show how better forecasts could optimize hydropower revenue, then invited ENGIE managers to adjust the assumptions themselves. “That turned a sales pitch into a collaboration,” she said.

Asked how much environmental impact factored into those discussions, both were blunt. “It wasn’t a big part,” Haji said. “ENGIE cares deeply about climate — but at the operational level, it’s about performance and reliability.” Ratliff added that framing their value as climate-risk mitigation helped connect sustainability to business outcomes.

Tabletop takeaways: Closing the gap

Midway through the forum, participants broke into tabletop working groups — a mix of startup founders, corporate innovators and investors — to co-create solutions to the culture-and-communication divide. A few themes emerged:

• Start with empathy, not ego. Founders admitted that they often underestimate the internal politics and risk aversion inside big companies. Corporate representatives confessed that they rarely appreciate the existential time pressure startups face. One table called it “learning to speak each other’s anxiety.”
• Build a shared calendar of reality. Timing was the most cited pain point. “Startups think in weeks, corporates in quarters,” said one report-out. Participants proposed joint planning roadmaps that lay out both sides’ milestones — product readiness, budget cycles, procurement gates — to prevent mismatched expectations.
• Define success in both languages. Groups urged partners to co-create success metrics that blend ROI and impact. “If the corporate only counts cost savings and the startup only counts tons of CO₂ avoided, you’ll never align,” one facilitator summarized.
• Find the translator. Nearly every group emphasized the importance of a champion — someone like ENGIE’s Haji — who can interpret corporate culture for startups and vice versa. One table called for formal “liaison fellowships,” embedding startup staff temporarily inside corporate innovation teams.
• Tell the story together. Pilots often stall in silence, participants noted, because neither side knows how — or is allowed — to publicize early wins. “We need shared storytelling,” said one corporate participant. “A co-branded success narrative builds confidence internally and externally.”

Following each table’s report-out, it became clear how practical — even tactical — the ideas had become. “Last year we diagnosed the friction,” said Mitchell. “This year we started building the grease.”

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