What is the TLC?
The Textile Lab for Circularity is a Social Innovation Lab*, with the goal of eliminating textile waste from landfill in the Greater Vancouver Area by 2040. Businesses tend to approach sustainability challenges individually, and miss out on the benefits of cooperation. By facilitating cross-sector collaboration within the textiles industry, we make large scale systems change possible. We break open innovation for the development of a circular textiles economy.
The Textile Lab for Circularity was born out of Sara Blenkhorn’s combined passions for sustainability and collaboration. It is now a joint venture between the non-profit charity SPEC and the BCorp, Leverage Lab.
Sara’s Background
Sara has always been passionate about sustainability. When she was 16, she moved to Mexico with her family, and became fascinated with a local lake restoration initiative. She watched as a non-profit assembled stakeholders from across industries to take a holistic, collaborative and systems approach to solving the problem. After witnessing the success of this strategy, Sara saw the power of collaboration, and its potential for powering systemic change. Collaboration, while it isn’t always easy, it often allows initiatives to go further. More folks are invited and engaged in the process and therefore feel a shared sense of ownership over the outcome. You may recall the classic saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together”. From building shared community houses to network to businesses, Sara has been developing her ability to help groups of people collaborate for 15 years now.
After graduating with a degree in International Development, and a Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, Sara worked with a leading consulting firm in Stockholm called The Natural Step. She began to understand the life cycles of business, and how sustainable practices could be embedded into those systems. She brought this thinking to Vancouver, where she started her own sustainability consulting firm. Besides lab development and facilitation, Sara’s services include BCorp consulting as well as Strategic Planning.
The Birth of the Lab
Initially, Sara applied the idea of cross-sector collaboration in her Peer Mentorship Exchange program, where groups of 5-7 values led businesses would form “pods” to share knowledge and and push each other's thinking for greater impact. One day, it occurred to her that convening groups around the same problem might have more power for impact. The first Leverage Lab was born, putting it on the map as one of Canada’s first Social Innovation Labs. The 2 year Lab was centered around helping values-led businesses differentiate themselves in the marketplace from the competition. It was a successful endeavor and the beginning of something much bigger.
(This slide was created by RADIUS SFU as a knowledge product of CONVERGE 2018 for the benefit of the Canadian Labs community. It is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Agreement)
Here is an example of one of the initiatives created together during the first Lab:
Sara took her learnings from this experience along with a curiosity for what larger wicked problems needed solving, to form another Social Innovation Lab. This lab connected 25 groups from across the Vancouver textile and waste diversion sectors, to research, map and prototype solutions on the issue of textile waste. Together, the participants were able to quantify the problem and developed a white paper called “Unraveling the Problem of Apparel Waste in the Greater Vancouver Area”. Other invaluable results of the Lab were the relationships formed between groups who never before had the opportunity to connect. This only confirmed the need for collaboration within the industry, and solidified how Sara and the Leverage Lab could be involved in facilitating collaborative change.
Leverage Lab to Textile Lab for Circularity - The Next Chapter
Sara and the Leverage Lab are excited to announce a partnership with Canada’s oldest charity SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation). Having sat on the SPEC board for 10 years, it was an obvious partnership for Sara, with an established relationship of trust - the main ingredient necessary for collaboration. This represents the next phase of the Leverage Lab, which will increase the Lab’s capacity for impact.
The lab now functions under the name Textile Lab for Circularity (TLC), with Leverage Lab as the Creative Innovation Partner, and SPEC as the Fiduciary Partner. We are excited to reveal our unique collaboration structure and Charter agreement, which we believe can pave the way for future social labs to follow.
After receiving funding from the Vancouver Foundation, Leverage Lab and SPEC partnered to develop an innovative structure for the TLC. The aim was to build a set of agreements as well as a governing structure for the TLC, but also for future labs to run. All agreements have been documented in a Charter Document. The Charter serves as the backbone structure for the lab as well as any future labs. It has a modular format allowing parties to swap in and out as needed. All players sign onto the Charter and adhere to the same agreements. This structure allows the lab to be both collaborative and flat. Governance of the project is overseen by the oversight panel and industry connections and insights are made through the expert advisory committee.
We are excited to introduce Sophia Yang as Project Producer for the TLC, who will be taking over operations, allowing Sara to focus on the facilitation and strategy aspects of the project.
Get Involved
Learn more about the TLC, and how to get involved here at our website, labforcircularity.com
The Textile Lab for Circularity is actively looking for members for its Expert Advisory Panel. Please get in contact if you would like to get involved!
Donate to our project through the SPEC Canada Helps page (choose TLC from the dropdown).
Learn about the Leverage Lab’s B Corp Consulting services at theleveragelab.com