Speakers

Cyndi Rhoades founded Worn Again in 2005 (later to become Worn Again Technologies), with a vision to eradicate textiles waste. Since 2012, the company has been in development of a world leading polymer recycling process for end of use polyester and cotton textiles which is currently in the industrialisation phase with a 1,000 tonne per year demonstration plant in development in Winterthur, Switzerland.

In 2022, Cyndi co-founded Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems which is focused on the development of the UK’s first industrial scale Automated Textile Sorting and Pre-processing facility (ATSP) for non-reusable textiles. The development will act as a template for further ATSPs which will enable high-volume and cost-effective feedstock for existing and emerging mechanical and chemical recycling plants. In 2026, Circle-8 plans to break ground on the UK’s first 50,000 tonne per year chemical recycling plant, which will turn non-reusable poly/cotton into high quality raw materials for making new polyester and man-made cellulosic fibres, to become new textiles as part of a continual cycle. 

Cyndi is a staunch advocate of textiles circularity, a thought leader and a regular public speaker, including at McKinsey’s Fashion & Luxury Roundtable at COP26 and the Financial Times’ Climate Capital. In 2023, Cyndi received an Honorary Doctorate degree from the University Arts London (UAL) for her work dedicated to advancing the field of textiles circularity. She is a multi-award winning entrepreneur: in 2021, Cyndi was selected as one of ten global honourees for the Conscious Fashion Campaign, an initiative of the Fashion Impact Fund.  In 2020 she became an Unreasonable Fellow, was awarded the PCIAW Outstanding Contribution to the Textile Industry and, in 2019, was a finalist for the World Economic Forum’s Circulars Leadership award. In 2019, she was as an awardee of LAUNCH, the US based initiative founded by Nike, NASA and IDEO. Cyndi became a Courvoisier Future 500 Ambassador, a Force for Good Pioneer by Tomorrow’s Company and an Enterprise UK Ambassador in the early 2000’s. She is an early pioneer of the sustainable fashion movement, a co-founder of the RE:Fashion Awards, the world’s first Sustainable Fashion Awards in London.  And more recently a co-Founder of World Circular Textiles Day.