Clarisse Merlet founded the French company FaBRICK to tackle the growing problem of textile waste in France, where less than a third of the estimated 4 million tons of waste is reused or recycled. FaBRICK takes discarded clothes and upcycles the fabric into insulation bricks, which can be used for construction as well as furniture. The aim of the company is to address fabric waste while also greening the construction industry, and has benefited from a crowdfunding round which helped buy the necessary machinery. Merlet also came up with her own ecological glue to compress and stick the textile into the brick shape. Since starting, the company has created over 40,000 bricks, using 13 tons of fabric, and has helped catalyze similar upcycling initiatives.
