Lululemon signs 10-year deal for recycled fiber shift

Lululemon plans to source nearly one-fifth of its fiber mix from material recycled from used clothing and scraps by 2035. The athleisure giant announced a decade-long agreement June 11 to purchase content from the Australian startup Samsara Eco, which specializes in AI-powered enzymatic recycling.

It’s the type of vote of confidence that young textile recycling companies hope for as they navigate the commercialization “valley of death” that has slayed so many, such as Renewcell.

The news comes as Samsara Eco brings a new factory online and moves its headquarters from Sydney to Jerrabomberra in the next few months.

“Scaling circular materials requires bold partnerships and a shared commitment to rethinking how our industry operates,” said Ted Dagnese, Lululemon’s chief supply chain officer, in a statement.

The agreement serves Lululemon’s 2030 goal to use only “preferred materials” that are either recycled or meet sustainable and ethical sourcing standards. Between 2020 and 2023, that has grown from 27 percent to 47 percent of overall fibers. In 2025, the brand is betting that it can reach 75 percent preferred materials, including 75 percent recycled polyester.

Last year, Lululemon and Samsara Eco developed the first garment, a peach shirt, from recycled nylon 6,6.

Lululemon’s ‘preferred’ materials pursuits

Lululemon is engaged in multiple efforts to mass produce non-virgin synthetics. That includes participating in a $100 million series A round of funding for Samsara Eco one year ago.

Lululemon has backed other startups, too, including plant-based nylon venture Geno in 2021, and ZymoChem, a synthetic biology firm making biobased materials for nylon 6,6. The company has also used chemicals from LanzaTech, created from captured carbon dioxide emissions, to produce yarn.

Its diversified approach to circularity includes a popular branded resale channel enabled by Tersus Solutions’ reverse logistics operation in Colorado.

Source: Samsara Eco

Lululemon’s challenges

Sustainability activists have criticized Lululemon for doubling its climate emissions between 2019 to 2023, during which period its revenues nearly tripled.

Lululemon also uses virgin synthetics in 67 percent of its materials, according to the Changing Markets Foundation. Whether virgin or synthetic, such textiles leach toxic chemicals into people’s bloodstreams, according to research published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. As more research on the health impacts of plastic fabrics unfolds, fashion brands such as Lululemon will face new supply chain risks.

Synthetic fibers are also a major culprit when it comes to microplastics pollution, although Lululemon participates in The Microfibre Consortium, an industry effort to mitigate the problem.

To its credit, the Vancouver-based company did score a C grade, up from a C-minus a year earlier, on Stand.earth’s most recent Fossil Fuel Fashion scorecard. The nonprofit gave the company credit for investing in next-generation and recycled fibers.

Meanwhile, the executives tasked with achieving Lululemon’s science-based, validated net zero targets for 2050 have recently changed. Former Nike executive Noel Kinder joined as senior vice president of sustainability earlier this month, about a week after longtime leader Esther Speck left.

How Samsara Eco works

Founded in 2021, Samsara Eco customizes enzymes to break down mixed polymers into monomer building blocks within 20 minutes. The processes to recycle polyester and nylon are similar, and the startup can manage blends. “We can deal with polyester cotton,” CEO Paul Riley told Trellis in December. “We don’t have an issue with the mixed nature of those garments; we can separate those quite comfortably.”

The company advertises a liquid process using low heat and pressure, resulting in a low energy footprint. It has three layers of intellectual property for the enzymes, the process and the machine learning.

Across the fabric lifecycle, Samsara Eco’s output has a substantially lower climate footprint than virgin material, and it delivers “true circularity,” Riley said. The end product is meant to be indistinguishable from and “cost-comparable” to traditional materials.

Samsara Eco is planning a commercial plant to recycle nylon 6,6 by 2028. It’s also working with Israel-based nylon maker Nilit to spin its recycled polymer pellets into yarn in Southeast Asia.

The company has set “a ridiculously ambitious target” to process 1.5 million tons of plastics each year by 2030, Riley noted. “But when you look at the numbers,” he said, “that’s .37 percent of the world’s annual plastics production. It is tiny. So so we need to get there, and we need to get bigger than that if we’re going to resolve the problems that are out there across plastics and across carbon.”

Offtake agreements with other brands are in the works, according to Samsara Eco. Meanwhile, rival biorecycling startup Carbios announced offtake agreements of its own, with L’Oréal and L’Occitane en Provence — but for recycled polyester packaging rather than textiles.

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