Adam Baruchowitz, co-founder and chief recycling officer at Return to Vendor, has spent 20 years inside fashion's waste stream. His company is building a circular materials platformanchored on monomaterial nylon design — and his argument for why circularity keeps failing is the clearest you'll hear.

On this episode of Street Talk, Arthur Zaczkiewicz and Baruchowitz get into the economics of textile recycling,the structural reasons corporate circularity departments have no budget, and what brands actually need to change in their sourcing and design process to make closed-loop fashion viable.

From fishing nets to recycled feedstock, from New York City Green Markets to the EU eco-design framework — this is the backstory behind one of the more serious circular economy companies in the fashion space right now.

00:00 — Introduction: Who is Adam Baruchowitz and why does his background matter?

03:08 — Why circularity keeps failing — and what the industry keeps getting wrong

05:18 — How the economics of textile recycling explain everything

06:11 — Fast fashion's overproduction problem: is the model structurally broken?

09:33 — How e-commerce free returns made fashion waste worse

12:33 — Why corporate marketing budgets never reach circularity departments

14:21 — How monomaterial design works — and what simple changes brands can make now

16:07 — Where circular economics work first: hospitals, uniforms, and closed-loop systems

20:32 — What 20 years of clothing collection taught Return to Vendor

23:31 — Recycling vs. circularity: why the distinction changes everything