Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
The Rise of Resale: Digitizing Vintage
Closed Loop Ventures Group invested in Thrilling, an online marketplace of vintage and secondhand items from boutiques across the United States.
Every year, 100 billion items of clothing are produced for a planet of 7.5 billion humans, and fashion consumption continues to rise, while the average number of times a garment is worn in its lifetime decreases. Thrilling has disrupted the vintage clothing market, digitizing clothes from local vintage shops to create a seamless customer experience.
Market Opportunity
There are more than 40,000 secondhand apparel stores across the United States, but more than 95% of their inventory is offline. And the resale market is growing 21x faster than the retail apparel market in the past three years.18
The Circular Advantage
Value: Creates value for and empowers small business owners of individual vintage shops by digitizing their inventory and creating new sales channels
Scale: Helps vintage stores reach a broader, global customer base and connects shoppers to unique, high quality, secondhand inventory at scale
Solves for a critical cost in the reuse market––sortation: Textiles require labor-intensive inspection and categorization after use, and Thrilling uses existing small-scale vintage shops across the nation to categorize, upload and digitize inventory
For more information about Thrilling, please visit their website.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
Turning Waste into Energy
HomeBiogas develops household and community-size anaerobic digesters that convert food and biological waste into clean energy.
HomeBiogas addresses waste management, energy production, sustainable food production and nutrient recycling with a product that uses natural resources in a continuous cycle. The system is a closed loop, so after HomeBiogas customers purchase the system they continue to generate value for years to come.
Their mission is to make biogas affordable and available to all, and with each year they reach more people around the world. Recently, the company has improved the circularity, quality and affordability of the products themselves—lengthening the shelf life to over 15 years, and making the materials used for the digester 100% recyclable.
2019 Product Launches
- HomeBiogas 7.0 offers the best and most cost-effective solution for small farmers and small businesses across the world
- HomeBiogas BioToilet solution is the most convenient, affordable and efficient off-grid option for managing human waste
Impact to Date
10,000+ systems sold in 100+ countries
20+ distributors around the world
Looking Ahead
HomeBiogas continues to provide biogas solutions for households and small farms, in addition to new market segments. This includes HomeBiogas as a solution for affordable housing projects and schools, and the introduction of a smart device that allows pay-as-you-go financing options for customers in developing countries.
In 2021, HomeBiogas announced its initial public offering (IPO) in Israel, with a valuation of NIS 310 million after money, or approximately USD 94 million. The recent IPO will accelerate HomeBiogas’ growth into additional markets, including North America, helping expand the solution at a larger scale into commercial operations in restaurants, hotels, universities, hospitals and others, generating significant savings in costs of organic waste removal, energy savings and a significant reduction in carbon footprint. Through the IPO, HomeBiogas also plans to increase production and sales in selected countries, through partnerships with local distributors.
For more information about HomeBiogas, please visit their website.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
Preserving Perishables
Mori extends the shelf-life and freshness of food by using natural, edible, and invisible coatings.
Through an innovative and proprietary process, Mori, formerly Cambridge Crops, uses just salt and water to extract the protein from natural silk and create a protective layer that keeps food fresher for longer. By coating meat, seafood, fruit, produce and prepared foods with a coating, the shelf life is extended. A longer selling time has the potential to reduce the amount of food that will end up in landfill and extend the reach of fresh food into neighborhoods and geographies that have not had access to date.
The team at Mori unravels the power of silk to tackle three of the major reasons that food goes bad: dehydration, oxidation and micro-organisms. The water-based protective layer can be easily integrated at any wash step or station. This means different kinds of stakeholders can start slowing the natural spoiling process at multiple points in the supply chain.
Recognition
Mori is on Bill Gates’ list of top companies tackling agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
“Approximately one-third of all food produced gets lost or wasted every year. That’s bad for people who don’t have enough to eat, bad for farmers, and bad for the environment…[Mori is] working on protective skins that keep food fresh longer.” – Bill Gates
Impact Goals
Mori has already started solving large inefficiencies in the food supply chain, and aims to reduce food waste and increasing food accessibility.
For more information about Mori, please visit their website.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
Closing the Loop on Textiles
Closed Loop Ventures Group invested in Evrnu, a fiber technology company that converts garment waste into new, high-quality fiber for the creation of new clothing, in partnership with brands and retailers.
Evrnu is a business at the forefront of the circular economy, integrating sustainable principles throughout its value chain. When textiles have reached the end of their useful life, the raw materials (the molecules) still have tremendous intrinsic value. They can be reused. But in the current “take-make-waste” model of production, they are not.
There’s simply not enough air, water or soil to sustain the linear model into the future, and that’s why Evrnu is so passionate about making circularity achievable. Their technologies break down garment waste to the molecular level and convert the polymers into new fiber, which is the basis of high-quality new textiles. This way of working is a significant paradigm shift as we can now look at the value of the useful life of a polymer, not just the product.
Highlights
World Changing Idea Finalist from Fast Company
$9 million raised in Series A to accelerate growth
NuCycl Spotlight
In 2019, Evrnu debuted NuCycl, a new consumer brand, at a global press event alongside brand partners Adidas and Stella McCartney. Using NuCycl technology, the team created the performance fiber and yarn for the limited-release 100% recyclable Adidas by Stella McCartney Infinite Hoodie, which was distributed to influencers and athletes. By introducing NuCycl to consumers before being available at retail, Evrnu leveraged the high-profile moment to raise awareness with consumers that their clothing is no longer waste.
For more information about Evrnu, please visit their website.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
Zero Waste Clothing
For Days brings consumers into the circular supply chain with a subscription-based relationship to recycled garments.
The average American throws away 80lbs of clothing annually, and 85% of clothing donations end up in landfill. The team at For Days aims to change this statistic.
For Days has a unique membership model in which people can wear and swap amazing organic basics and in the process, accumulate impact over junk, changing the traditional fashion industry business model. Customers are empowered to change their relationship to clothing and enjoy a life with less stuff.
How It Works
A customer purchases a brand new organic cotton garment from For Days. When the customer would like something new, they can exchange it for a For Days piece at a big discount. For Days then works with post-consumer recycling partners to make sure all returned materials are recycled into new fabrics and new products.
Impact Highlights
300,000 gallons of water saved
19,000 pounds of carbon dioxide averted
73,000 pounds of waste averted
For more information about For Days, please visit their website.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
Incentivizing Reuse Systems
Algramo builds smart dispensing systems that incentivize the reuse of packaging.
Algramo offers a complete refill and reuse system, solving economic and environmental issues through its vending machines that dispense staple products, such as household cleaners, “by the gram.”
Their smart reusable packaging minimizes the amount of waste left behind from single-use plastic packaging in landfills and oceans. At the same time, Algramo’s refill system addresses the poverty tax by allowing families to buy the exact quantity of products they need at bulk prices. Algramo not only makes the sustainable option the most affordable alternative, but also the more equitable and convenient option. In 2020, Algramo expanded its footprint into North America––proving the viability of the solution across geographic contexts.
Impact and Accolades
1.7 million liters sold in 2020
2,500 stores served in Chile, potentially reaching 400,000 end customers
Algramo’s reusable packaging lowers the cost of life’s essentials by 30% comparing to business as usual
Won MIT Solve and National Geographic Sky Ocean Ventures Circular Economy Challenges
Algramo’s Circular Business Model
- Changing behavior: 86% return rate of packaging in Algramo 1.0 model, while still providing an economic incentive for customers
- Re-imagining packaging: Creating a system where packaging can retain value, and actually increase in value the more it is reused
- Elevating customer experience: Delivering products to customer’s doors with electric vehicles
- Stakeholder engagement: Aligning the incentives of brands, retailers and consumers to enable the circular economy
With Closed Loop Partners and Sky Ocean Ventures as partners, Algramo has expanded their team and technology beyond Chile. In 2020, 3 pilots launched in New York City, across Manhattan and Brooklyn.
For more information about Algramo, please visit their website.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
A feature on a Closed Loop Partners investment
AI Robots and Recycling
AMP is an artificial intelligence and robotics company developed by a CalTech PhD, focused on increasing the quantity and quality of sortation processing at recycling facilities.
AMP Robotics uses state-of-the-art computer vision and robotics that rapidly identifies and recovers material from the waste stream. Thereby improving the quantity and quality of recycled commodities recovered from co-mingled waste streams.
By significantly reducing the cost of sorting in recycling facilities, bringing fine-grained operational data collection and creating transparency in the recycling space, AMP seeks to change the fundamental economics of the recycling process. They aim to lower the cost of recycling and make them universally cost-competitive with the tip fees of a landfill.
Impact and Accolades
45 robots installed and operating at materials recovery facilities as of 2019
30 new robots operational in 2019 alone
CEO, Matanya Horowitz, won the inaugural Waste360 Innovator Award 2019
Raised $16 Million Series A led by Sequoia Capital, joining Alphabet-backed Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners and leaders in sustainable investing
Product Launch
AMP Cortex™ dual-robot system uses two high-performance robots that rapidly sort, pick and place materials at an unprecedented speed of 160 pieces per minute creating optimum productivity
Looking Ahead
We look forward to AMP’s technology bringing recycling rates up in the U.S. and around the world. Over the long-term, the technology could also lower the cost of recycling infrastructure and enable recycling in non-developed nations.