We were lucky to catch up with Lauren Choi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I founded The New Norm when I realized that there must be a drastic change in the way we recycle plastic. The shocking reality is that the U.S. does not recycle most of its plastic because we severely lack the infrastructure to do so. This was truly brought to light in 2018 when China enacted the National Sword policy, banning the import of U.S. plastics. Suddenly, U.S. landfills were overwhelmed because our plastic had nowhere to go.

At the same time, there was an outpouring of articles regarding the fashion industry and how it is now the second largest polluting industry after the oil and gas industry. As someone who worked for a swimwear brand in LA for 4 years, I understood this personally. I bought fabric from the LA Fashion District, a place visited by thousands of designers every day, and worked with large wholesale fabric distributors—sustainably made fabric was not an option in that arena.

As a Materials Engineering student at Johns Hopkins at the time, these problems resonated with me and inspired a great sense of urgency. I dedicated a summer to building an extruder machine in my garage that could recycle plastic into yarn. It was supposed to recycle plastic into yarn. For the first three months, burnt, black ink oozed out of the machine. The video logs I kept of myself while working are not picturesque. Being at home, I didn’t have access to a lot of the equipment I had at the Johns Hopkins labs (where I was studying materials engineering at the time)… so I improvised. Every time I needed something, I had to make it or chase the problem until it was fixed. The summer came to an end and the machine could only produce grey puddles of plastic goop. Back at school, it occurred to me that college campuses waste tons of red Solo cups, and I should try them as input into the machine. I fixed up the machine and put a Solo cup in. It worked the very first run.

Now, after 4-5 years of formal product development with textile labs, I have invented five novel trade secret yarns and fabrics made from recycled Solo cups, various ocean plastics, and old fishing nets–all plastics that are not recycled in our current infrastructure. We have spent the last year in pilot production trials to scale our process and work with sustainable apparel brands.

The New Norm was founded with an understanding that we are living in a time where drastic, innovative measures must be taken to reverse the damage we have done to our earth. This is a pivotal time in history at which humans have the power to make impactful change. The New Norm is a promise to better our environment and pursue sustainability through tangible implementation.

Lauren, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

It is estimated that 300+ million tons of single-use plastic waste are produced globally each year. Our current recycling infrastructure is severely insufficient as 91% of plastic is not recycled worldwide. The major barrier to our present-day recycling infrastructure is the staggering amount of different plastic types entering the recycling stream. The New Norm addresses this issue head-on, giving traditionally un-recyclable materials a new place in the circular economy.

The New Norm transforms plastics into sustainable yarns and fabrics. We specifically target plastics that are not recycled in our current infrastructure and have created trade secret fiber blends with Solo cups, various ocean plastics, and old fishing nets. We aim to work with pioneering companies in apparel, automotive, and home furnishing to create sustainable end products. We operate as a B2B sustainable materials company. On behalf of brands, we can identify recyclable plastics, perform R&D, help achieve corporate sustainability goals, and provide unique materials with great marketing potential. By offering material licensing, yarns, and fabrics, a brand can easily integrate our products into their existing supply chain.

Sustainable materials still make up a small fraction of the products on the market, and there is an opportunity to act fast to achieve early large-scale adoption. As consumer demands shift, brands must prioritize their environmental impact to stay competitive in the ever-evolving industry. Consumers are critical of how slow companies are to enact tangible, large-scale change and numerous brands have been accused of “greenwashing.” Additionally, 150+ billion pounds of virgin synthetic yarn are produced annually. If major downstream markets (apparel, automotive, and home furnishing) intend to transition to sustainable materials in the coming decades, we must establish ourselves now to begin tackling such a significant volume. We believe that by acting fast and achieving large-scale adoption, we can be an early player in this sustainable revolution.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Being an entrepreneur is all about problem solving. As a founder, one must be fast on their feet and ready to pivot. I launched a pilot Solo cup collection program on the Johns Hopkins campus Fall of 2019. We partnered directly with student organizations to collect cups after each weekend. From a student body of 5,000 undergraduates, we were collecting thousands of Solo cups each month. I was honestly shocked at the plastic waste one campus could produce. However, we had to completely stop the program when COVID started. All of a sudden, no one was on college campuses across the country. I had to completely pivot away from this collection program idea and began looking for suppliers.

This was an entirely new challenge. Unfortunately, in the US, our recycling system is single-stream meaning everything is put into one blue bin (all types of plastic, cardboard, glass, metal, etc). This make it incredibly difficult to sort. Finding a pure stream of recycled plastic became my next biggest challenge. After 1-2 years of speaking with plastic collectors, visiting plants, and connecting with more people in industry, I found organizations collecting pure streams of plastic that shared my mission.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

To date, I have only raised non-dilutive grant funding to pursue lab testing and product development. Our largest grantors to date have been Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, Tiger Global, and Venture Well. Funding from these institutions has been absolutely game changing. It is what allowed me to run costly plastic recycling, yarn extrusion, and fabric knitting trials.

As someone who began a startup in college, I started out by applying to university business plan competitions and participating in the Johns Hopkins Fuel Accelerator Program for students. These were valuable experiences where I developed my business model, met with advisors in industry, and pitched in front of different audiences. I cannot express enough how critical these experiences were to the development of The New Norm. For anyone with an idea, I would advise putting yourself out there. Just apply to a grant. You’ll learn so much from the experience and get great feedback that you can use to improve your idea.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thenewnormfabric.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenewnormfabric/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-choi-thenewnorm/

Image Credits
Photos of the 2 women – credit to: Mecca McDonald (By.Pedestal)