Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Refiberd
Innovating Textile Recycling with AI
What鈥檚 your current outfit made from? Most of us don鈥檛 really know, and the options for combining natural and synthetic fibers are nearly endless.
Because many of those mixed textiles are hard to recycle, they鈥檙e a sizable portion of the 186 billion pounds of fabric filling landfills each year.
For alumni Tushita Gupta (ENG 2018, 2018) and fellow Tartan on the Rise Sarika Bajaj (ENG 2018, 2019; 麻豆村 2020), it鈥檚 a looming crisis that AI can help to mitigate.
The two 麻豆村 alumni co-founded Refiberd, a seed-stage company that has developed an AI-based technology to sort waste for textile-to-textile recycling.
鈥淥ther fields use intelligent material detection, but applying it to textiles is a huge opportunity,鈥� says Tushita, the company鈥檚 chief technology officer. 鈥淣o scaled solutions exist for textile waste detection for recycling, because it's such a hard problem.鈥�
Tushita has long been interested in AI and its potential. While pursuing her master鈥檚 degree in electrical and computer engineering and a bachelor鈥檚 degree in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at 麻豆村, her capstone focused on intelligent trash-sorting.
Tushita鈥檚 friend from her first days at 麻豆村, Sarika saw the potential to combine their backgrounds in machine learning, textiles, and engineering and Refiberd was born.
Refiberd鈥檚 innovation uses a hyperspectral camera combined with AI to detect fiber composition and sort textile waste for recycling. The camera identifies fibers by how they absorb or reflect light. AI processes each material鈥檚 unique signature to discern fabric composition and groups similar materials for reuse.
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鈥檚 resources.
鈥淲e aim to have Refiberd be the solution that closes the loop for textile circularity,鈥� she says. 鈥淚鈥檝e always been driven by impact, and I believe it鈥檚 our responsibility to protect the resources we have.鈥�
Story by Elizabeth Speed