1. A journey to microplastic-free athletic apparel
Erik de Groot

2. Kahoot.it
Time for a little quiz

3. We make THE alternative for plastic athletic apparel: athletic apparel based on natural materials like hemp and eucalyptus

4. Studied at the hague university: urban planning
Studied at the hague university: urban planning. Nothing to do with fashion, but I was always working as an entrepreneur. Energy transition

5. Studies entrepreneurship minor at Berkeley.

6. A must watch docu. Made me start Iron Roots
source: Amazon

7. Working out in polyester/nylon:
Makes you smell bad
Static energy on your skin makes it uncomfortable

8. We didn’t find a good alternative, so we started it ourselves:
Stefan, Ashkan & Erik

9. Team Define the essential skills needed for your business
Either learn them yourself, or find someone who has that skillset and take them in your team
What is needed for a good team in any organisation?

10. This is the main problem: much more polyester gets used than other fabrics.

11. polyester nylon elastane acrylic lycra spandex
Some of the names which are fossil fuel (plastic) based

12. When you wash your plastic clothing, tiny pieces get released due to friction.

13. So why is there so much polyester in clothing?
it’s cheap.
Easy to manipulate with chemicals: windproof + waterproof

14. Conferences: We can make everything just like cotton, but why don’t they just use cotton??

15. The limiter:
Elastane
Elastane is needed to make things stretchy, so a lot of athletic apparel can’t be made without plastic

16. One of those skills we didn’t have was cutting and sewing
One of those skills we didn’t have was cutting and sewing. So we had to learn that ourselves. Here’s a good pic of how that went

17. Problem in creating clothing. We wanted to do it locally
Problem in creating clothing. We wanted to do it locally. So there’s only one country you can turn to in Europe: Romania. Turned out that production was really difficult there.
Source: amazonaws

18. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution
Words to live by

19. Challenges in scaling:
if you’re small it’s very difficult to change things in production

20. Consumer product: 1. Don’t want to spend too much
2. Clothing industry is very abstract
3. Too much to tell as a brand
4. It has to look good

21. Convince them of quality/functionality
Consumer product:
1. Don’t want to spend too much
Convince them of quality/functionality

22. Tell them stories about the industry
Consumer product:
2. Clothing industry is very abstract
Tell them stories about the industry

23. “Microplastic-free athletic apparel”
Consumer product:
3. Too much to tell as a brand
“Microplastic-free athletic apparel”

24. Design x Functionality x Sustainability
Consumer product:
4. It has to look good
Design x Functionality x Sustainability
This is what sets apart good products from great products.
Is also the reason why The Prius didn’t make a big impact, and the Tesla did

25. What can we do?
What can we do about microplastic pollution?

26. Organic cotton: solves a lot of the issues regular cotton has and is widely available.
Things to be concerned about: monoculture

27. Hemp:
No pesticides or insecticides
Can grow quickly and requires 1/3 of the land and water compared to cotton
Flax (linen) is closely related, but hemp is a bit less sturdy and has more applications

28. Eucalyptus:
Made with NMNO in a closed loop system
Very high quality material
Worries: monoculture and wildfires. Can be solved with biodiversity guidelines in the growing process.

29. Bamboo:
Great as a resource, sucks as clothing
Needs CS2 in the production proces = known hazardous chemical
Greenwashing at the current state

30. Animal fabrics:
- Great performance but really big scaling issues (cashmere gaot example)

31. Washing bag helps to reduce microplastics released from your clothing

32. Challenges
Recycling plastics: problem occurs because we can’t make microplastic free recycled plastic
Greenwashing
Issues with production: manufacturers are creating bottles for direct pre-consumer recycling

33. Important to note that plastics are needed and have brought us tremendous adventages
Hard plastics will stay around, soft plastics (clothing) have to leave

34. We should recycle plastic into things that are hard and don’t degrade easily.
source: focusur.nu

35. Bioplastics
Good alternative for the future: bioplastics.

36. Our current state

37. Our now
We have our own little webshop

38. Our now
2 physical stores that sell our products

39. Our future

40. Be THE alternative to plastic sportswear
Set an example for the industry
Have 100% overview of our supply chain
Develop our own fabrics
Be 100% circular in our production
Our dreams

41. Innovation in recycling methods Innovation in production methods
Opportunities
Innovation in recycling methods
Innovation in production methods
Convince government of value of recycling
Build new business models that fit in circularity

42. Q&A

43. A journey to microplastic-free athletic apparel Erik@ironroots.nl