Sarika Bajaj, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Refiberd

Leading the Textile Recycling Charge

The ultimate destination of what you’re wearing — as well as 186 billion pounds of fabric annually — is most likely a landfill.

A sobering thought, but most of today’s fabrics are varying mixes of materials composed of natural and synthetic fibers and chemical dyes, which makes them difficult to recycle.

For alumni Refiberd founders Sarika Bajaj (ENG 2018, 2019; CMU 2020) and fellow Tartan on the Rise Tushita Gupta (ENG 2018, 2018), it’s an opportunity to make a global impact.

“Whenever you want to recycle something, you need to know the composition of the material you're recycling. With textiles, the material detection problem is challenging,” says Sarika, the company’s chief executive officer. “We’re trying to make that detection easier to lower fabric’s impact in the world.”

A problem as challenging as this one requires an entrepreneurial approach. Sarika brings that mindset and leadership skills to the startup along with a strong technical foundation.

At CMU, Sarika earned master’s degrees in technology ventures and electrical and computer engineering as well as a student-defined bachelor’s degree in product ideation, prototyping and development.

During an internship with Intel, she worked on wearable biosensing prototypes, her introduction to textiles through the lens of design and engineering. Through her participation in IDeATe and the Integrated Innovation Institute, Sarika continued her research in the world of textile engineering where she became acutely aware of material challenges with textile recycling.

Sarika and Tushita had been friends since their undergraduate years and co-founded Refiberd, mixing their interdisciplinary backgrounds of engineering, machine learning and textiles.

It was an idea built on social impact, and it’s working. In 2023, Refiberd was recognized with the Global Change Award from the H&M Foundation, honoring early-stage innovations that help the fashion and textile industry protect Earth’s resources. The company is attracting investment and talent to expand their capabilities to address the textile waste problem.

“The first goal is to reduce textile waste,” says Sarika. “The next goal is seeing how we can help other recyclers in other industries.”

Story by Elizabeth Speed