Homeboy Threads

Seeing is believing. That's a key takeaway Louisa Hoyes and I are taking back from this week's LA demo of the TOMRA unit doing automated textile sorting at the facility of Homeboy Threads. On Thursday, we hosted around 100 guests who enthusiastically clapped whenever air nozzles shot out to move a 100% polyester garment into the right compartment. Thanks to California Product Stewardship Council, LA Sanitation & Environment and Homeboy Industries for a great event and for an exciting collaboration so far. #circulartextiles #textilerecycling #TOMRAtextiles Vibeke Siljan Krohn Elisa Johnson Joanne B. Louisa Hoyes Nadia Gonzalez

Last week we saw the exciting arrival of our TOMRA Recycling demonstration unit at Homeboy Threads for a textile waste sorting pilot 👕♻️ What better place to have our textile sorting technology set up than Los Angeles: the textile manufacturing hub of the USA 🧵🪡And California: a state at the forefront of circular textile legislation in the USA, pushing to implement EPR for textiles under SB 707 (Senator Josh Newman) 📝 The sorting pilot, led by California Product Stewardship Council and LA Sanitation & Environment, will demonstrate automatic material detection and sorting of textiles deemed no longer reusable, sorting by fiber composition and colour, to provide a high purity feedstock to emerging fiber-to-fiber recycling in the US. 🔺Due to the current lack of sufficient infrastructure, such as sorting for recycling, LA city landfills approximately 70,000 Mt per year of commercially generated textile waste, such as offcuts from garment manufacturing. 🔺On top of that, CalRecycle (2020) identified textiles as the fifth most common material in California’s single-family household waste stream, and subsequently a top priority for landfill diversion action The TOMRA sorting pilot is located at Homeboy Threads – a social enterprise offering reuse and recycling services for apparel and textiles. It is the newest venture of Homeboy Industries, a gang rehabilitation and re-entry program, training and employing people committed to transforming their lives after incarceration. Homeboy Threads offers a new life to people and apparel. This pilot is a great example of the collaboration needed to shift from a liner, take-make-waste value chain, to a new circular economy for textiles. Bringing together legislators and municpalities, collectors and graders, leading sensor-based sorting technology and emerging fiber-to-fiber recycling technology, we can demonstrate the future of closed-loop textile waste recycling ♻️🤝👕🔄 Vibeke Siljan Krohn Jo Eikeland Roald Malte Althaus Dr. Thilo Becker Mari Larsen Sæther Johanna Stemberger Joanne B. Elisa Johnson

From leaving gang life to walking alongside youth to break cycles of trauma, Gabriel Lopez, Case Manager at Homeboy Youth Reentry Center, is dedicated to redemption, hope, and second chances. Check out his story of transformation. Together we can, like Gabriel says, chase life and thrive. #TransformationStory #HomeboyYouth #HomeboyIndustries

Textile World magazine featured our very own Joanne Brasch for winning the 2023 AATCC Future Leaders Award. Joanne is nominated in the Materials Interest Group, for her work with CPSC shifting the cost burden for home generated waste. Read the article: https://bit.ly/3Ri1o2a #textile #textilewaste #award #climateleaders

Homeboy Threads is helping trainees, like Yvette Mationg, redefine their future and break free from the limitations imposed by their past. 💚 See how in this Spectrum News 1 feature: https://bit.ly/44tC3Wk