Recycling Down with Tersus Solutions
June 12, 2024
I’ve been hearing about a US-based down recycling solution at Tersus Solutions in Denver, Colorado for about a year, and I wanted to know more. I learned all about it from Chris Robbins, Tersus’ SVP of Engineering and Technology. This story has many parallels to the growing recycled textile industry, which is one of the reasons I find it so interesting.
Chris started at Tersus as an intern in 2011 has been there ever since. He has worked on Tersus’ proprietary waterless CO2 cleaning machines, and in 2016 he started working on the down recycling project which has grown tremendously in the last 12 months. In June 2023 Tersus was recycling 200 pounds of down every two months; six months later in December 2023 they recycled almost 10,000 pounds.
When embarking on this program, the goal was to keep the quality of the down as high as possible (which they did). Down is an natural insulator, and most of us already love it for its ability to keep us warm without weighing us down. In order to keep its value up, they realized they had to sort and separate it all by brand, quality and type.
The Down Extraction Process
A retailer sends down products (like jackets) as ‘end of life’ products in a truck. Sometimes the product is brand new, even with tags, which is its whole own story on over-production, so we will stay focused on the down recycling. Tersus keeps each brand separate.
Next, they separate products by goose and duck down. Goose is higher quality because it has bigger clusters, so it takes less down to get a higher fill; it’s worth more money.
Then they separate products by down color- white + grey for both goose and duck. The highest price per pound is white goose down, and the lowest is gray duck down.
Next, the products go through the down-extraction process. Chris has built a machine that feeds the jackets into the extraction chamber in small pieces (the chamber itself was purchased). Inside the chamber the jacket is beat up to get the down to come out. The down floats and is sucked upwards in the co-vacuum/blower system, and the jacket’s shell material sinks and is ejected. In this process they are taking out 85-90% of the usable down from each item. The down goes through another separation process to remove strings, buttons and anything not-down.
Next, the down is cleaned and sterilized in Tersus’ proprietary liquid CO2 cleaning machine. CO2 is very gentle on natural fibers; it doesn’t beat up down like our home washers and dryers. It also increases the loft of the down 10-20%; it opens up fibers, takes off oils and relofts it. If you’re wondering, one down jacket contains an average of 1/4 - 3/4 pounds of down.
The down is injected into 40 pound shipping bags (a 36” by 60” bag). I find this much down hard to fathom; it must be so densely packed to fit into a bag that size. I love to imagine what would happen if a bag exploded, which Chris assured me has happened.
It goes into storage until they get an order for it. It is tracked in Tersus’ warehouse management system.
40 pound bags of down
Tersus is learning from the extractor machine they bought, and they intend to take their learnings and build an even more advanced down-extractor to meet their exact specifications, which will make the process faster and allow them to handle bigger volumes of down goods to be recycled.
Specs: is it as good as virgin down?
Yes, it is just as good as virgin down, and it is Global Recycling Standard (GRS) approved. Initially the buyers of the recycled down were very skeptical, and Tersus had to prove the quality to them with testing reports. Then they had to work up through their buyers’ corporate structures; just because someone from a materials or sustainability team was/is interested in using recycled down, it still has to go through the organization and it has to get specced in. For example, when building a new collection, every item has to be designed and materials have to be chosen and approved. Recycled down has to first get overall approval from leadership (which can take a long time in large companies) and then it has to be assigned a specific product in order to make it onto the line and actually be ordered for production.
Sales + Pricing
Who does Tersus sell this down to? They have two options: wholesalers and individual brands. When wholesaling, they sell to Allied Feather and Down or Downlite who together buy the majority of the down. They have a product that incorporates recycled down, and they love the quality of what they get from Tersus.
Tersus also has a high-end brand customer, Crescent Down Works, who make and sell down jackets in the US. Someone please buy me one of these for the holidays, butter yellow, thanks.
Lastly, Tersus also sells back to brands directly to enable circularity of materials, which is another reason it helps to keep down separated by brand. They can receive a shipment from brand X of down items to be recycled, keep them separate, pull all the down out and sell that down back to brand X with confidence that is the exact same down brand X already used once.
In terms of pricing and profitability, here’s what Peter Whitcomb, Tersus’ CEO says:
The program is profitable based on 2023 numbers. Prices for recycled down can be on par with new but often are about 10-20% less expensive to virgin depending on the market dynamics and overall virgin supply from China and Eastern Europe. Generally recycled gets a slightly lower price vs virgin but we think the GRS certified domestic story could draw a premium price in the future with the right buyers.
I think two of the biggest issues with pricing are that most down products are made across the world from Tersus where the virgin down is a byproduct of the poultry industry, keeping prices reasonable and providing down closer to most of the factories that need it.
Related to price are some supply chain issues:
To make the recycled down available to the majority of down products manufacturers it will have to be shipped from Denver, CO globally. Freight is not cheap!
Tersus had to work to gain a sanitation certificate for the CO2 cleaning and can now ship down anywhere in the world. It is also GRS certified which adds a level of cache for brands who want to create more sustainable products. Certifications are typical hurdles for business’ doing something completely new or fringe; they have to prove themselves and their methods against the existing standard, which can be quite cumbersome and time-sucking.
Now that they can send the down globally, Teresus has to see if they can figure out how to get it to key manufacturing countries at price parity, or make a strong enough case for a higher price. This challenge in itself makes a strong case for selling to domestic manufacturers, although we don’t make a whole lot of down products in the US, and those we do make here are quite expensive due to labor costs and the relatively small size of the garment manufacturing industry.
Tersus is also working through post-consumer logistics to get more supply as they are supply-constrained. They are trying to figure out how to work with thrift shops, collectors, sorters and other aggregators to get down goods out of the supply stream before they are discarded. Even if a down jacket is damaged and cannot be reworn, Tersus can still extract the down, clean it and sell it as recycled down. Yet another reason to sort post-consumer goods into hundreds of categories.
Scaling
From recycling 200 pounds per month in June 2023 to 10,000 pounds in December 2023… what changed?
Before, there were smaller extraction units that required more manual prep work. The jacket-chopping machines were small, and the separation chamber was small as well.
In May 2023 Tersus built a new facility and custom designed key machinery to speed up the process.
The extractor room went from 4’ x 4’ to 10’ x 10’, and Tersus bought a bigger industrial extractor machine which also cut down on prep time. Now they could just lay a whole jacket down and it would suck the entire thing in.
They dialed in air flows and feed rates.
All of this unlocked the scale up. Tersus had been storing untouched volumes since 2021 when they had received multiple truckloads from a sorting partner, and now they are flying through that material.
My Takeaways
You don’t get paid to innovate (at first). Tersus has definitely shelled out a lot of money to make domestic recycled down a reality. They are building a moat for their business by designing a sophisticated system to create a feedstock that is high quality and highly sustainable. I believe over time this product will gain cache and credibility and it will be sought after, and I hope domestically!
Redesigning the system to your specs is a great idea, even if it’s costly up front. Tersus has created and is creating multiple proprietary technologies that enable them to work in ways that are more efficient and scale-friendly. Where they see a laborious process, they just build their own better process and machinery.
It’s possible for recycled to be as good as virgin. This is a great example of a recycled material holding the same quality as a virgin material. Once the down is extracted and cleaned it is identical to virgin down. From an environmental standpoint, it’s better because little natural resources were needed to create it (maybe just some energy to run the machines). To me, this is a perfect example of the circular economy creating jobs while using things that already exist.
Full circularity is possible for some materials, like down. The idea that a brand could reuse the same exact down for multiple products across many years is inspiring.
Global supply chains make this harder- one of the biggest hurdles for Tersus in selling this recycled down is the fact that down products are rarely made near where they are recycling the down.
Getting large companies to adopt recycled materials (or other sustainability innovations) usually takes a long time. We already know this, but I’m just stating it again as it always sticks out to me. There is opportunity here for a visionary company to buy up all of Tersus’ supply and market the heck out of an evergreen recycled down collection. (Remember Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign? I’m picturing “Don’t Buy New Down” or “I’m full of it. Recycled down, that is” campaigns.)
There are many parallels here with the textile recycling industry, but (I think) due to the simplifying fact that down can be extracted, cleaned and reused as-is, the complexities are a bit less than with textile-to-textile recycling. I am surprised and happy to learn how straightforward it is to reuse down, especially if you have the right machines.
Lastly, I asked for some clarification on profitability from Tersus, and I was delighted to see Steve Madsen’s name in my inbox with a reply. Steve and I worked together for a long time when I was at EILEEN FISHER, Inc, and his integrity and authenticity always shone through to me. I’m going to give him the last word here, as he get his points across quite well with no help from me.
I want to reiterate that the down is profitable for Tersus, that's how we are wired, and that it is cost competitive in the market. Shipping overseas is often the cost killer for the "smaller" quantities that we are able to produce. We were slow to even consider shipping down out of this hemisphere as I found satisfaction in telling the brands to make stuff on this side of the ocean.
What the plant and process looks like today will look completely different in a year. We are innovators, and are constantly working on improvements in all our equipment and processes. Our success has come from looking at things differently and challenging the status quo. We will continue to modify our equipment and processes to improve efficiencies and yield. Quality will always be our first priority. Secondly we will continue to trailblaze the task of sourcing the down and streamlining the collection and logistics of getting it to Tersus. This is the biggest challenge at this point. Cracking that, which we will do, will open up avenues to recycling other products.
Wool is next.
Can’t wait! If you have access to down for recycling, please reply back to this newsletter, and I’ll put you in touch with Tersus.
Side-note: Whenever I write a newsletter like this people ask me if I was paid to write it and the answer is no, I was not. I will tell you if I am being paid to write something (and I will only accept payment for content if I believe in the company). It is a dream of mine to have this newsletter sponsored someday, so if you know someone, or if you are someone, let’s talk.
