Performance shorts and compression T-shirts are a far cry from polyester regeneration but that’s the world that Patrik Frisk is immersed in now. The now serves as CEO of Reju, a textile regeneration company based in Frankfurt that just completed the buildout of a plant to recycle fabrics. Called the Regeneration Hub Zero, the factory can recover, collect and sort that have been discarded and turn them into Reju Polyester, which has a 50 percent lower carbon footprint than virgin polyester.
Reju was formed just one year ago in Paris. It is owned by Technip Energies, an engineering and technology company, uses technology invented by IBM and is an investor in the company. Frisk said he first got involved with this emerging technology in 2019 while he was still heading Under Armour.
“At Under Armour, we were on a path to try to use more in our polyester garments,” he said, but the team wasn’t able to find enough recycled materials from textile sources to fulfill the mission. The only available option was recycled bottles and that is not sustainable long term, they believed, so the company needed to find other paths. Soon after, they heard about this new technology being developed by IBM that they believed was “revolutionary,” he said, because it was able to work with mixed materials, which is what most apparel items are made from.
“With 100 percent pure polyester, you kind of take it apart and put it back together,” he explained. “And that can be done with lots .