Circular technology and logistics startup SuperCircle announced today that it has raised $7 million, with proceeds aimed at scaling its textile recycling solutions for brands and retailers.

Textile consumption and disposal are significant contributors to environmental sustainability challenges, with the EU Commission recently reporting that consumption of textiles has the fourth highest impact on climate change and the environment, after food, housing and mobility, and is one of the top factors impacting water and land use as well as greenhouse gas emissions, and textile waste outpacing the growth of plastic waste in the U.S. over the past two decades.

Launched in 2022 by co-founders Chloe Songer and Stuart Ahlum, New York-based SuperCircle provides a technology and reverse logistics infrastructure platform to power recycling solutions for brands and retailers of textiles and clothing. SuperCircle connects waste management with recycling solutions appropriate to the type of fiber in the textile, as well as enabling brands and retailers support for their brand-owned recycling programs or to offload bulk inventory. The company’s services include development of turnkey trade-in programs for consumers to send in worn clothing for brand credit, excess inventory solutions, and real-time data and reporting for transparency into program performance.

The company will use the funding to expand its infrastructure – linking previously fragmented shipping, consolidation, sorting, grading, and recycling services – to service brands and retailers both domestically and internationally. It will also accelerate partnerships across brand-owned recycling programs and bulk inventory solutions and engage in strategic hiring.

Chloe Songer, CEO and Co-Founder of SuperCircle said:

“We’ve seen such an acceleration in retail’s adoption of circularity and extended producer responsibility over the last five years, and recognized the need to create a bridge between retail brands and the recycling industry today. SuperCircle’s end-to-end technology and logistics platforms allows brands to collect, sort, and process pre-consumer and post-consumer apparel and footwear, while providing garment level tracking and tracing through responsible end-of-life.”

This pre-Series A financing round was co-led by Radicle Impact and Ulu Ventures, with additional investors including Earthshot Ventures, BBG Ventures, Lyra Ventures, and Blueprint Ventures.

Ami Naik, Partner at Radicle Impact said:

“We are proud to support SuperCircle’s vision of building a comprehensive textile recycling platform connecting brands to recyclers to address the urgent and growing problem of 11.3M tons of textile waste going to landfills each year in the US. As consumers become increasingly aware that the current system of textile recycling is broken, SuperCircle enables brands to become a critical part of the solution.”