Navigating Textile Circularity And Policy With Jessica Franken

SPEAKER_1 (0:04)

Welcome to Change Cycle, the podcast exploring the shift to a circular economy. Join host Christine Yeager as she dives into sustainable business actions with leading experts and confronts the discomfort that comes with change.

Discover how change is at the center of optimizing recycling and creating a regenerative future. Tune into Change Cycle and be part of the solution.

Christine Yeager (0:35)

Welcome, Jessica. Thank you for being here. I'm excited to have this conversation. Sorry.

Jessica Franken (0:42)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Christine Yeager (0:46)

As I have learned and moved into this sustainability world over my career, it's become more and more apparent that you can't operate in this space without operating and thinking a lot about policy.

Jessica Franken (1:03)

Right.

Christine Yeager (1:03)

And it's something like coming from a business degree in communications and graphics and commercial printing. It was not something I thought would be a part of my career, but here we are, and now I'm diving deep into EPR. So anyway, I'm excited to have this conversation with somebody who knows so much about how to navigate this space.

Though, besides all of that, we'll start with our original, our always initial question, which is how do you live with intention?

Jessica Franken (1:31)

Yeah, I was glad I had a heads up for this question because it's an interesting one and it really made me think.

So, you know, I think kind of one of the things that I landed on was I really tried to be cognizant of my own personal boundaries in my work and also in my personal life. And I think the reason that's become such a focus or intention for me is because I'm kind of, I'm an empathic type and also a people-pleaser. And I think sometimes when you're kind of wired that way, that can really certainly kind of put me at a detriment in some ways because I will sometimes agree to things or edit myself in a certain way in order to make sure that everybody else is being taken care of. But I don't always think of myself. And what I've learned in kind of building a better system of boundaries is that when I'm kind of taking care of myself first, everybody else benefits from that because the alternative is really when you kind of over give again with people that you work with or in your personal life, then, you know, resentment can kind of build and you're really not operating, you know, in your most effective way. And so not trying to get all psycho babbly here. But I do think that it's been really helpful for me because that carries over again in work. Really kind of making sure that I'm looking out for my own needs does help me be more productive and be more clear in how I'm dealing with clients and other people that I'm interacting in and I think, frankly, it kind of lends itself to being authentic, truly authentic interactions and trusting that, which ultimately again, I think helps support the work overall. So kind of a long and involved answer, but again, it's a really thoughtful question. And it's something I'm still working on.

Christine Yeager (3:38)

No, but I love it. Like boundaries are hard. I'm in this leadership book club and we read this book, set boundaries, I don't know, have a better life, something like that.

Jessica Franken (3:49)

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And again, it's just something that I had to learn. I think that, and I don't want to make it sound like people were transgressing my boundaries and I was just a victim or anything like that. I just think it's interesting when you really kind of check in with yourself, okay, what do I want to do here? What do I want to say? What's okay? What's not okay?

It ends up being foundational for everything that you do.

Christine Yeager (4:17)

Absolutely. And it's like, yeah, it's not like people are necessarily coming for your boundaries, but it's also if you don't know what they are, it's too hard, it's not, you can't draw the line in the sand if you don't know where to draw it. So that's great. So tell us also a little bit about SMART.

Jessica Franken (4:36)

Yeah. So SMART is an acronym. It actually stands for the Secondary Materials and Recycle Textiles Association. This is a trade association that's been around since 1932, so nearly a hundred years. And our member companies are companies that are involved in textile reuse, recycling, repurposing, and recovery overall. And so these are companies that operate thrifts.

These are companies that are involved in the collection of these materials, either through things like convenient collection boxes that you sometimes see throughout local communities for donating, or you're worn textiles and used clothing. These are companies that are involved in importing and exporting these materials after consumer use.