Note: This article reflects Looptworks’ earlier work in upcycling. Today, we focus on textile-to-textile recycling, producing high-quality recycled fiber for manufacturing applications.
Last week, Looptworks founder and CEO Scott Hamlin was honored with Oregon Business & Industry‘s Oregon Visionary Award.
“Looptworks is set up to address the waste and excess that happens in the textile industry with multiple solutions for textile circularity,” says Scott Hamlin. “Being recognized for this award is probably one of the highlights of our company. We hope is shines a light on our approach to business.”
Video Transcription:
Oregon Business Journal, Angela Whilhelms: Loopworks truly embodies what the Oregon Visionary Award is. It’s a company that’s successful. They care about their people. They’re solving big problems, and they’re making a difference for Oregon.
Scott Hamlin: Looptworks is set up to address the waste and excess in the textile industry with multiple solutions for textile circularity phase one, which is upcycling. So take those things, use design and innovation to turn excess materials back into new, really cool products, and start a conversation.
Alyssa Augustine: There’s a few really interesting projects that I think are core to Looptworks, and one of those is the airplane seats and making those into tote bags, duffel bags, backpacks.
Scott: And then from there into other solutions, like downcycling, where we take things in a zero waste to landfill solution and turn them into things like insulation, stuffing hard fibers for aggregates and concrete. And then the ultimate goal is to be able to do the aluminum can thing, where the feedstock from our company, the recycled fiber content, becomes the yarn, which becomes the t shirt, which then gets resold again.
Alyssa: One of the first projects that I was able to work on, it was with recycled denim. It’s been a piece of apparel, it’s been a coffee bag. It’s now new material, and now it’s a bag for us, and that’s already five, four or five different life spans.
Scott: And so that’s the technology that we’ve now been working on to evolve. Thus the name Looptworks, and not just Upcycleworks.
Alyssa: By not using virgin materials. We are conserving air quality, we’re conserving water. We’re not creating anything new. We’re creating things out of pieces of material that already exist and products that already exist.
Scott: We have been focused on community in the areas where we operate and we really have positive social impact there. I made the decision to partner with nonprofits that employ adults with disabilities and barriers to employment, and so they’re baked into our supply chain, and those are our receiving centers where we send the raw materials that come in.
Alyssa: We get sent the entire seat, and our nonprofit workers that we work with, they take the leather off the seats. There’s cleaning that we do, there’s deconstructing that they do, and then they will ship it to us, for us to actually cut and sew into new product.
Scott: And the other program that we set up was working with single mothers, refugees and folks who have challenges holding down full time work those folks do manufacturing in home studios, where we’ve set them up.
Alyssa: For me, being able to work with nonprofits and local sewers in the community, it feels authentic, and it feels very family oriented, and it feels like we have a similar goal, and we’re all working together to help each other out.
Scott: I’m proud of the work that we do here. I’m proud of the team, and I’m proud of the reputation that we have for doing the right thing.
Alyssa: I love the people that I work with. I love the challenges that I come to work to solve every day, and I like the problems that we are all collectively trying to solve.
Scott: Us being recognized for this award is probably one of the highlights of the company, winning the visionary award for us, we hope it shines a light on the approach to business that we have, so that other businesses can act this way as well.
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Scott is a visionary leader with more than 32 years of experience in strategic branding, innovative product creation, supply chain sustainability, and sales and marketing for global organizations. He founded Looptworks in 2009 as an industry solution for turning excess materials into upcycled consumer products. In 2022, Scott transitioned the company to a B2B business model focused on eliminating global textile waste through closed-loop solutions.
Scott is a visionary leader with more than 32 years of experience in strategic branding, innovative product creation, supply chain sustainability, and sales and marketing for global organizations. He founded Looptworks in 2009 as an industry solution for turning excess materials into upcycled consumer products. In 2022, Scott transitioned the company to a B2B business model focused on eliminating global textile waste through closed-loop solutions.
