Words by Laura Markwardt. Video and photography by Earthrise Studio.

The skylight at Earthrise Studio gently illuminates two figures as they take their seats at the studio’s creative hub in East London. It’s here that Jack Harries, Co-founder and Creative Director of the impact-driven media company, joins Nils Altrogge, Head of Innovation Technology and Research at On.

Harries, a storyteller and thought-leader around climate consciousness, has a natural affinity with On’s sustainability-focused goals, and makes the perfect partner to explore and communicate both challenge – and change – in the sustainable sportswear space. Harries and Altrogge are discussing On’s journey towards de-fossilization and circularity.

“On was born in the Swiss Alps,” says Altrogge. “The planet is both our playground and the most important testing lab – we’re committed to keeping and maintaining this playground for future generations.” 

Today, “we are at the very beginning,” he says, referring both to innovations in the advanced recycling space at On, and a global need for action to tackle the sportswear industry’s sustainability challenges at large.

The biggest of those challenges? Building scalable alternatives to the industry’s huge reliance on virgin fossil fuels. 

“Polyester in T-shirts, the foam in the shoes, and the soles; All of these are made out of crude oil feedstock. This is the number one big problem,” explains Altrogge.

The mountain of waste created by the industry throughout the product production lifecycle, is also at critical mass. “The other problem is what happens to the products at the end of their life,” Altrogge continues, “What happens to the waste?” 

Altrogge sees “de-fossilizing our industry” as the “number one” way to make a positive impact by lowering our collective carbon footprint.  

As the adage goes, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. To put some numbers behind the scale of the challenge (and the progress being made, as outlined by the On Impact Progress Report), the vast majority of On’s carbon footprint – 99 percent in 2022 – comes from Scope 3 emissions.

Scope 3 emissions can be defined as emissions indirectly generated by a business. Raw materials – the resources On uses to make products – account for more than half of those Scope 3 emissions. These numbers aren’t unusual in the sportswear industry, and that’s why de-fossilizion is such a game-changer.

“De-fossilization means finding alternatives to crude oil to make products and we have a clear strategy to achieve that,” continues Altrogge. “We’re building our material strategy on four different pillars.”

On’s CleanCloud® –a materials innovation made from carbon emissions – is one answer. “This is a unique project. We did it working together with a few companies – companies [Borealis, LanzaTech, and Technip Energies] in the petrochemical area,” says Altrogge. “We thought, why not make the problem part of the solution? And we developed a new supply chain from captured carbon emissions.”

Alongside carbon-emission-based materials, Altrogge explains the three other material pillars that guide On’s sustainability work.

“We have to find new ways with recycled materials [conventional and advanced recycled] and new ways with bio-based materials,” he explains.

Conventional recycling in this context is mostly about polyester – “which comes from the PET industry and PET bottles. But we have a problem here. The PET industry itself is circular.” By taking bottles out of the system and making textiles, which are then often thrown away, it creates a suboptimal solution.

Advanced recycling is better, because, “this is all about keeping the integrity and the quality of the material. It's a chemical recycling process where you can turn a T-shirt into a T-shirt again.” 

Maintaining the value of the material is key to the success of advanced recycling. “You can even upcycle through advanced recycling, for example, turning landfill into a product,” Altrogge continues. “This is the area where we are putting the biggest investment and research. We believe that this is the future.”

The third material pillar, after conventional and advanced recycled materials, is bio-based materials. 

In general, bio-based and bio-attributed materials help On to move away from the use of virgin fossil fuels as feedstock. “So instead of crude oil, we can take renewable resources – and a great example is castor beans. This shirt I'm wearing is over 90 percent based on castor beans,” says Altrogge, pointing at his Cyclon T.

On works to avoid “problem shifting” in the supply chain. For instance, castor beans are a drought-tolerant crop that doesn’t compete with forest land or other food crops. 

People are looking for “a sense of purpose” when they interact with brands, says Harries, and prioritizing high-performance, alongside a lower carbon footprint, plays into that. At On, “from day one, performance and sustainability go hand-in-hand,” says Altrogge.

Harries namechecks the balance of high-performance and sustainability as epitomized by On’s Cyclon™ program. 

In a world where most sportswear consumption is linear – you produce, buy, use, then throw away – Cyclon is a circularity program where you can subscribe or buy a product containing materials that can be returned to On and then recycled into new shoe parts afterwards.

You may own the experience of running in the shoe – but you don’t own the piece itself. “This is a first step in the direction of the circular business,” says Altrogge.

The goal is to increase On’s portfolio of sportswear containing recyclable materials, and yet Altrogge nods to the complexities of scaling circular programs at a macro level. Yes, it’s possible. But it’s not easy and it can’t be done in isolation. “Making a product containing recyclable materials is one thing, but making a business circular is a totally different ball game,” he explains.

On’s innovation in this space can’t realize its full change-making potential alone. The industry at large needs to implement long-term, collective solutions. “If we’re going to solve [these challenges], It's going to take all of us working together and collaborating,” says Harries.

Altrogge likens that need for collaboration to a team with a shared goal, “At the start line, all the brands are competitors. In the game of sustainability, we are all playing together as one…scaling up is the most important thing, but also the most important challenge.”

Today, On’s first apparel Pace collection made with CleanCloud® technology, uses 20 percent of recycled carbon emissions, replacing the same amount of virgin fossil-based materials and equally reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent compared to virgin polyester. “We’re taking more steps” towards doing more, says Altrogge. 

“You can either feel overwhelmed by complexity of problems, or fall in love with the creativity of the solutions,” says Harries, recalling a quote that sums up the power of innovation in the here and now. 

On may still be “at the very beginning” of its sustainability journey, but when it comes to change-making progress in innovation technology, there is no finish line. The goal? To transform the industry, together.