Ordinarily, I subscribe to the belief that in sustainability discussions, opinions are redundant; we should lean on the science. But, yesterday a conflation of both was enlisted in an outcry for answers as to why Renewcell, fashionâs leading textile-to-textile recycling technology, had filed for bankruptcy. The science (and resulting technology) is solid; the route to profitability less so. And itâs the latter that really matters.
Yes, Renewcellâs advanced textile recycling process worksâI saw it with my own eyes at the inaugural launch in Sweden of their first (and now painfully numbered) Renewcell 1. But I wondered, from inception, how a facility in Sweden could help fashion brandsâRenewcellâs target customerâto solve the problem they seemed to care about most: recycling post-consumer waste. âOld jeans turned into new jeansâ was effectively the technologyâs strap line, and a fair one in terms of the companyâs ambition and technical potential. But the reality was that their advanced chemical recycling processâlike all others of its kindârequires a highly specific waste input (at least 95% cotton, at the time I visited Renewcell 1); a need best met by post-industrial (off-cut waste) on factory floors in manufacturing countries, not discarded clothes from consumers.
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Renewcell 1, onsite waste awaiting processing.
Renewcell
My (curiosity-led and objective) question to Renewcell, Circ, Infinited Fiber and other similar technologies has always been: âsince you require homogenous waste of a specific composition and quality, and in large and consistent volumesâconditions currently best met by post-industrial waste streamsâwhy are your technologies in Europe and the U.S. where those needs cannot be met?â And, âwhy arenât you in the textile supply chain in Asia, alongside the factories who can provide your waste input, and purchase your recycled output?â Why, I still wonder, is the hopes of textile-to-textile recycling hinged on fashion brands in the Global North with other priorities, who procure products from the supply chain in the Global South? Why isnât the advancement of textile technologies being integrated into the supply-chain, since brands procure and sell finished goods, not fibres?
The answers have often been a combination of these: âthe investors are investing here [in the global north]â; âthe brands are here, so weâre hereâ, or âwe can achieve our lowest carbon footprint here due to renewable energyâ. Sweden offers abundant renewable energy, and that was certainly a factor for Renewcell. However, last week I revealed that Indiaâs rapid transition to renewable energy will soon answer that need, but I guess we may never know if the overall business case for Renewcell stacks up there.
And here we come to the central challenge I observe with advanced chemical recycling technologies setting up shop outside of manufacturing hubs and outside of readily available feedstock reserves: absent infrastructure and supply chain integration. Itâs a fact that the majority of the worldâs textiles and clothes are made in Asia. Around half of all textiles are made in China. Itâs also a fact that consumption in the Global Northâs mature fashion markets is stagnating (as examined astutely by researcher Lutz Walter). Conversely, markets in Asia are set for rapid growth in step with the expanding middle class, particular China and India. India is the most promising hope for textile circularity, but this success depends on the viability for each stakeholder along that supply chain. This requirement for a âbusiness caseâ has been somewhat ignored in the commentary following Renewcellâs bankruptcy filing, where the financial faltering was reportedly due to âa lack of orders from brandsâ. This reluctance to place orders points to the absence of a business case for Renewcellâs recycled âCirculoseâ fibers in the competitive and price-driven textile supply chain.
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Sheets of Renewcell’s recycled textile ‘Circulose’ dissolving pulp, ready to ship from Sweden to … [+] Asia.
Renewcell
Renewcellâs business model placed the onus on brands to order its recycled âCirculoseâ dissolving pulp, which is much like pieces of cardboard that are shipped to textile spinners in Asia, rehydrated to release the fibers and then mixed with other fibers like cotton. The combined fibers are then spun into yarns, before being sent to textile mills to be made into fabrics. Relying on brands to prioritise this manner of materials sourcing is about as far removed from their business expertise and motivations as you can get; precious few brands buy any fibers at allâmost donât even know where their fabrics are made, let alone their origin of the fibers that went into them. Instead, brands typically rely on their nearest (tier 1) garment manufacturers to source textiles on their behalf, and to handle all the costings to make the economies of scale and unit pricing work, on the brandâs behalf.
Consider this: a brand facing todayâs tough economic outlook can either commit far in advance to sourcing a more expensive (but lower environmental impact) ingredient for future spinning into textiles in a volatile market, or, they can continue to ask their garment suppliers to source the ready-made cheaper equivalent in final textile form at the time they need it. The mistake here is to assume that if the science and tech stacks up, and the output is of high quality and low impact, it will succeed off the back of brandsâ commitment and storytelling to consumers. In fact, a business case for buying the fiber must exist, and one that isnât at odds with brandsâ upholding their fiduciary duty to maximise profits for shareholders; the absence of orders for Renewcellâs Circulose indicates that this business case does not currently exist. And this is not only a shame and a sadness for the brilliant Renewcell team members, but also its supply chainâthe factories and waste handlers in Bangladesh, Turkey and Kenya, who had agreements to sell and ship their waste to Renewcell, but now must search for another market for it, hurting their livelihoods.
Where there is an existing supply chainâend-to-endâthere is infrastructure and operational data to evaluate the business case for textile-to-textile recycling technologies, without relying on sustainability storytelling, and hoping that planetary good will will trump economics and profit maximisation. Currently, without environmental imperatives driving decision-making, the only other ones are financial. A new, low impact material cannot rely on realignment of corporate morality in order to compete with, or displace, incumbentsâthis harsh truth is critical.
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Renewcell 1 commercial recycling facility, Sweden. November 2022.
Renewcell 1
Experts in countries like India and Bangladesh who are sourcing fibers, spinning yarns, knitting and weaving fabrics and making garments at fixed unit prices in fluctuating markets, on behalf of brands, are likely best placed to evaluate and integrate new recycling technologies. There is already a well established mechanical textile recycling supply chain in Indiaâs, for example, and the business case for building out advanced chemical recycling beyond this would be evaluated and demonstrated as a function of demand, volumes, technical feasibility, Capex and projected revenues within the textile economy that exists. This seems a logical next step for advanced recycling of textiles (and one I will evaluate in my next article).
Hopefully the next phases of textile-to-textile to recycling will be catalysed in the heart of the supply chain in Asia, where recent waste analysis by Fashion for Good and Canopy, and the establishment of Indiaâs Re-START Alliance, shows hope for expansion of a viable circular textiles economy.
I spend my life teaching people about money. Credit cards, ISAs, investing, debt. I have built a career around making financial decisions feel clear and achievable. But there is one product I have held for nearly a decade, one that takes hundreds of pounds from me every single month, and I genuinely have no idea what to do about it.
My student loan balance today sits at £43,679.57. I am on Plan 2. My wife is on the same plan. Between us, before either of us has turned 30, we are carrying over £100,000 in student debt. That number, by the way, is still going up.
I understand compound interest. I understand marginal tax rates, repayment thresholds, the difference between RPI and CPI. I have explained all of these things to my audience of millions of people. And I still cannot tell you whether I should overpay my student loan, invest the money instead, or simply never think about it again. If that does not tell you something is deeply wrong with this system, I don’t know what will.
I went to a good school. At good schools in England, there is no real conversation about whether you go to university. The conversations are about where you will go.
Apprenticeships were barely mentioned. Alternative paths were not celebrated. If you had academic ability and did not apply, it quietly felt like failure, like you had let everyone down. So my friends and I all signed up – at a cost of £9,000 a year.
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I borrowed £36,750 over four years studying Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. I knew the fee. I knew vaguely it was written off after 30 years. That was genuinely the extent of my financial education on how this system worked.
Nobody explained that interest starts accruing from the day the first payment lands, before you have sat in a single lecture. Nobody mentioned that the rate is RPI plus up to 3%, and that at its peak, that meant an interest rate above 8% back at the height of inflation. There was not one lesson on the contract we were signing. We were just told: “You will earn it back”… “It’s worth it”… “Trust us.”
By the time I graduated in 2020, before I had made a single meaningful repayment, my balance had already climbed from £36,750 to £42,504. That is nearly £6,000 in interest, added quietly while I was still in lectures and before I had earned a penny.
Gabriel Nussbaum has a first class degree from one of the country’s most demanding universities but applied to 30 or 40 graduate schemes before getting an offer (Supplied)
Then came the other half of the promise. I had a first class degree from one of the country’s most demanding universities in one of its most demanding subjects. I applied to 30 or 40 graduate schemes and got one offer (I would consider myself lucky).
My starting salary was £36,000; great, by graduate standards, and I was grateful for it. But within a few years nobody was asking about my degree. Meanwhile, my friends who had done apprenticeships were debt-free, with three years of earnings already behind them, with equivalent qualifications in hand. And they were starting to look less like people who had missed out, and more like people who had quietly figured something out that the rest of us hadn’t.
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As my salary grew, something else happened that I was completely unprepared for. Once you cross £50,270, you are paying 40% income tax, 2% National Insurance, and 9% student loan repayment simultaneously. That is 51%. More than half of every additional pound you earn is gone before you see it. This is the reward the system designed for people who did everything they were told to do. This is what investing in yourself looks like in 2026.
And here is the part that keeps me up at night. Unless you are earning well above £65,000, your balance is almost certainly still growing faster than you are clearing it. I am paying hundreds of pounds a month and my loan is barely moving. The middle earners, the teachers, the engineers, the nurses, the ones the whole promise was supposedly built for, pay the most, for the longest, and often never clear it at all.
So back to my own personal circumstances. Between my wife and I we are at around £100,000. It’s still climbing as I write this.
This is the psychological cost that never appears in any policy document. It is not just the monthly repayment that breaks you. It is logging in and watching the number rise despite making payments. It is calculating your net worth and feeling like you are starting from a hole you did not fully understand you were digging. It is the way it changes how you think about risk, about changing jobs, about whether a pay rise is even worth pushing for when you know the majority of every extra pound is already allocated to go somewhere else. For a system designed to expand opportunity, it generates a remarkable amount of quiet dread.
Every year I ask myself whether I should just attempt to pay it off by overpaying each month. At a 6-8% interest, I would clear almost any other debt without hesitation. But this one sits differently. Keir Starmer promised to abolish tuition fees entirely when he was running for Labour leader. He did not. There is constant noise about changes to the system, about interest rate caps, about threshold updates. So I leave it. We are told most people never fully repay anyway, and that logic has embedded itself in my thinking even as I watch the number climb month after month.
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What makes this harder to stomach is that the terms we signed up to are not even the terms we are living with. Graduates were told that repayment thresholds would rise with inflation each year. They have been frozen. The interest rate is calculated on RPI, a measure the government has largely abandoned for its own purposes because it runs higher than CPI. If a private lender changed your repayment conditions after you had signed the contract, we would call it mis-selling. When the government does it, Rachel Reeves calls the system “fair and reasonable.”
I keep coming back to one thought. I did A level Further Maths, Physics and Economics. I have spent years immersed in personal finance. I did not fully understand what I was signing at eighteen, and I cannot fully make sense of it now. So what chance did anyone else have? What chance does any 18 year old have, sitting in a school hall being told this is just what you do next, armed with nothing but the vague reassurance that this pathway will work out.
We were eighteen when we signed. The least that those in power can do now is stop quietly changing the terms, stop charging an above inflation premium that guarantees middle earners repay far more than they ever borrowed, and stop insulting an entire generation by calling it fair.
Because right now, the honest message to young people is this. Work hard. Go to university. Earn well. And you will still spend the next thirty years wondering if you made the right call.
I have built a career on answering financial questions. I cannot answer this one.
An actively managed ETF, Akre Focus targets high-quality U.S. companies with strong returns and disciplined management.
On Feb. 4, 2026, Mesirow Financial Investment Management, Inc. disclosed a new position in the professionally managed Akre Focus ETF(AKRE +0.00%).
What happened
According to an SEC filing dated Feb. 4, 2026, Mesirow Financial Investment Management acquired 2,012,662 shares. The value of the position was $131.8 million as of Dec. 31, 2025. The quarter-end value of the position matched the estimated trade size based on the ETF’s average trading price during the quarter.
This is a new position for the fund, representing 2.7% of its 13F-reported AUM in the filing.
Top holdings after the period include:
UNK: BRK-B: $408 million (8.4% of AUM)
NASDAQ: AAPL: $271 million (5.6% of AUM)
NYSEMKT: MOAT: $205 million (4.2% of AUM)
NASDAQ: GOOG: $164 million (3.4% of AUM)
NASDAQ: MSFT: $140 million (2.9% of AUM)
As of Feb. 4, 2026, AKRE shares were priced at $58.33, or 14.5% below the 52-week high.
AKRE was down 14.5% over the last year, underperforming the S&P 500 by 30 percentage points.
Company Overview
Metric
Value
Fund assets
$7.5 billion
Price (as of market close 2/4/26)
$58.33
Sector
Financial Services
Industry
Asset Management
Company Snapshot
Offers a diversified portfolio of U.S. equities, preferred stocks, warrants, options, cash equivalents, and select foreign securities.
Operates as an actively managed ETF, seeking to invest in companies with high returns on capital, strong management, and attractive reinvestment opportunities.
Provides exposure to high-quality U.S. and select global equities through a concentrated, fundamentals-driven investment approach.
Akre Focus ETF is an actively managed fund specializing in high-quality U.S. companies with strong shareholder returns and disciplined management. The fund’s strategy emphasizes purchasing businesses at reasonable valuations, with flexibility to invest in a range of equity-like instruments and up to 35% in foreign securities. The ETF’s competitive advantage lies in its focused, fundamentals-driven selection process and its ability to adapt allocations based on valuation and opportunity.
What this transaction means for investors
Mesirow Financial Investment Management holds an extensive portfolio mixed with quality growth stocks and ETFs. Notably, the firm reduced positions in several holdings last quarter, including large-cap tech stocks like Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet, while adding a relatively large position in the Akre Focus ETF.
AKRE is a new ETF version of the famous mutual fund by the same name, which has put together a solid record since its 2009 inception. The fund holds a portfolio of around 20 to 30 quality stocks that the manager has thoroughly researched and believes can compound at above-average rates over the long term.
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Since 2009, AKRE has returned about 14% annually — almost identical to the S&P 500 return. But over the last five years, it has underperformed by about six percentage points annually.
After a year that saw tech stocks soar, Mesirow is rotating out of some of its winners and into a quality, actively managed fund that could see better days ahead. AKRE’s focus on looking for undervalued “compounding machines” could pay off for patient investors.
John Ballard has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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