We caught up with Luke Henning, Chief Business Officer of Circ, for an in-depth conversation about scaling circular innovation, rethinking waste, and rewriting the story of fashion’s most intractable problem.
Every September, World Cleanup Day forces us to reflect on the mountains of waste piling up around us. Few industries carry a heavier burden than fashion, which churns out more than 100 billion garments a year, most of which end up burned, buried, or forgotten in closets.
For Henning, the waste crisis is not a distant headline. It’s the very reason Circ exists. “We realised the industry wasn’t just inefficient,” he says. “It was stuck. Nobody had figured out how to take blended textiles apart and turn them back into useful materials at scale.”
That was the starting point for Circ’s mission: to crack the code of recycling one of the toughest material combinations in fashion, cotton and polyester blends, and to give the industry the tools it needs to finally close the loop.
Circ’s story didn’t begin in fashion at all. The company originally emerged from a biotech background, working on ways to break down biomass. But as Henning and his team explored applications, they realised the biggest and most urgent problem wasn’t in fuels or chemicals—it was in clothes.
“Fashion produces this incredible volume of blended textiles, especially polycotton,” Henning explains. “And it’s almost impossible to recycle. If you can’t separate the cotton from the polyester, you can’t do much with it. That’s why so much ends up in landfills or incinerators.”
The team pivoted, leveraging their technical expertise to invent a process that can separate polyester and cotton fibres, recover both at high quality, and feed them back into new textile production.
It was, in many ways, a radical decision. The apparel industry was, and still is, notorious for underinvesting in sustainability innovations. But Henning saw an opportunity. “We wanted to do the hard thing, the thing everyone else was avoiding. Because if you can solve blended textiles, you can solve a huge part of the problem.”
While single-fibre fabrics like 100% cotton or 100% polyester can already be recycled with existing technologies, blends dominate the market. Jeans with stretch, T-shirts with poly, shirts with elastane—these hybrids are designed for comfort and durability, but they wreak havoc at the end of life.
“Polycotton is everywhere because it’s cheap, versatile, and familiar,” says Henning. “But when you throw it away, you realise the system was never designed for that garment to have a second life.”
This is where Circ’s process comes in. Using a unique hydrothermal method, the company can recover both cotton and polyester in usable form, with no compromise in quality. That means the recovered polyester can go back into new fibres, and the cotton cellulose can be spun into regenerated cellulosic materials.
It’s a technology that could unlock circularity at scale—if, Henning emphasises, the industry is willing to embrace it.
Innovation in fashion is littered with good ideas that never scaled. Henning is acutely aware of that risk. That’s why Circ has focused not just on the science, but on the industrial partnerships needed to build real capacity.
In 2023, the company announced a new facility in France, designed to demonstrate large-scale recycling of polycotton textiles. It’s a significant leap from the pilot stage. “We knew we couldn’t just stay in the lab,” Henning says. “If you want to change the system, you have to operate at industrial scale, at industrial economics.”
Partnerships with major fashion houses have been critical. Circ works directly with brands who are under increasing regulatory and consumer pressure to address waste. By integrating Circ’s recycled fibres into their supply chains, these brands can prove circularity isn’t just a buzzword, it’s viable.
If there’s one thing Henning is clear about, it’s this: technology alone won’t save fashion. “We can build the plants, we can scale the technology, but unless there’s legislation to level the playing field, the cheapest option will always win. And right now, virgin polyester is dirt cheap.”
Europe is leading the charge with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and the EU Textile Strategy, which require brands to take financial responsibility for waste. France, in particular, has become a testing ground for circular textile regulation. That’s one reason Circ chose to expand there.
“Policy matters,” Henning says. “If you want companies to change behaviour, you have to make it costlier not to change. Otherwise, sustainable options will always remain niche.”
He is pragmatic, though, about the limits of legislation. “Regulation can drive adoption, but innovation still needs champions, people inside companies who are willing to take risks, pilot new ideas, and push their organisations forward.”
Every transformative idea has its believers and its sceptics. For Circ, the challenge has been finding allies who are willing to commit beyond pilot projects.
“There’s always a tension,” Henning notes. “You have innovators who are excited to test, and then you have procurement teams who are laser-focused on price. Getting those two groups aligned inside a big corporation, that’s the hard part.”
But he also sees a shift. Rising consumer awareness, combined with regulatory pressure, has created new urgency. “Ten years ago, these conversations didn’t even exist,” he reflects. “Now, brands are coming to us. They know they can’t wait another decade.”
One of Henning’s strongest critiques is reserved for the recycling narrative that dominates much of fashion’s sustainability marketing.
“Recycled polyester bottles turned into T-shirts, that’s not a solution,” he says bluntly. “It sounds good, but it’s a dead end. You’re just diverting bottles from being recycled into bottles, and you’re creating textiles that can’t be recycled at the end of their life.”
For him, the only real solution is fibre-to-fibre recycling, where old clothes become new clothes, endlessly. Anything else is just prolonging the problem.
Even if the technology and policy align, Henning warns that consumer behaviour remains a wild card. Fast fashion’s model of endless consumption undermines even the best recycling systems.
We can recycle as much as we want, but if people are buying twice as much every year, we’re still losing the battle. Circularity has to go hand in hand with reduced consumption and better design.
Education is key, but so is experience. Henning believes that when consumers feel the quality of recycled fibres, when they realise it’s not a compromise, they’ll begin to shift their expectations. “We have to show people that circular products can be better, not just less harmful.”
When asked what single policy he would enact, Henning doesn’t hesitate: mandatory recycling targets for textiles, enforced globally.
“It’s the only way to get everyone moving in the same direction,” he argues. “If every country required a certain percentage of textiles to be recycled back into textiles, suddenly the economics would flip. Investment would pour in. Scale would happen.”
Without such mandates, he fears, progress will remain patchy. “We can’t afford another decade of pilot projects. We need industrial reality, everywhere.”
Henning has a clear message for entrepreneurs looking to tackle sustainability: choose the hardest problem.
“Don’t chase the easy wins. If you want to make an impact, go where the barriers are highest. That’s where change matters most.”
He also stresses the importance of building coalitions. Startups can’t shift entire industries alone. They need partners, investors, and regulators all working together. “Innovation is fragile,” he says. “It needs support to survive.”
And finally, he encourages patience. “We’ve been at this for years. Sometimes progress feels slow. But every breakthrough builds momentum. You just have to keep going.”
For Henning, Circ’s biggest achievement isn’t just technological, it’s proving that the industry is ready to move. “When we see our recycled fibres entering mainstream supply chains, when we see big brands committing to scale, that’s when we know this is real.”
He points to their work in France as a turning point. “It’s no longer about theory. We’re doing it, at an industrial scale. And once you prove it can be done, you can’t go back.”
The story of Circ is, at its core, the story of turning waste into worth. What was once an intractable problem, blended textiles, has become the focal point for innovation, policy, and partnership.
But Henning knows the work is just beginning. “The future we’re building is one where clothes don’t end up as trash. They become the raw material for the next generation of clothes. That’s circularity. That’s the vision.”
As the world confronts both the scale of fashion’s waste and the urgency of climate change, companies like Circ are showing that transformation is possible. Not easy, not fast, but possible.
“Every garment we recycle is a step away from landfills and incinerators,” Henning says. “And every step matters. The challenge is enormous. But so is the opportunity.”
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