Could you start by introducing yourself and your role at On, and give us a sense of the panel you'll be part of at the Textiles Recycling Expo EU? 

I have a background in Textile Engineering with a major in sustainable processes from the Swedish School of Textiles, Borås. 

About 3 years ago I joined On as an Innovation Material Developer for Apparel with a focus on sustainable material development.  

The panel at the TRE will revolve around the Fashion For Good lead project regarding alternatives of elastane. Elastane poses various challenges to run a circular economy. First, it’s a fossil based feedstock, second the production process and its recyclability at the end of life pose big challenges. 

Elastane is a material that is something of a paradox in sustainable apparel. It's essential for performance and comfort but is also difficult to recycle. From a material innovation perspective at On, how central has that challenge become to your work? 

When it comes to materials, our priority is performance and durability of materials. Our main challenge is to source more sustainable elastic yarns while not diminishing the materials and products we put on the market. 

Modern sportswear is unthinkable without elastic properties. So, for us it’s on the one hand about developing materials that fit with emerging recycling technologies and on the other hand, keeping an eye out for recyclers that can valorize conventional elastane and remove roadblocks for further downstream processing. 

This panel brings together a brand, a fibre innovator, a fashion accelerator, and a manufacturer. What does each player bring to the table, and why does solving the elastane problem require that kind of cross-value-chain collaboration? 

The brand acts as the pull factor, creating demand and driving the scaling process. The innovator lays the groundwork through research and lab trials, navigating the extensive trial and error required before others can step in. 

The accelerator unites a diverse group of partners and competitors, pooling demand to signal the producing industry, support emerging innovators, and push incumbents into commercial availability. The manufacturer bridges the gap between lab conditions and the textile industry floor, trialing materials at scale and providing the critical feedback to the innovator and experience that ultimately makes or breaks the product. 

Material innovation at a performance brand sits at a pretty unique intersection. You need things to work hard, look good, and increasingly, have a much lower environmental footprint. How do you navigate those competing demands day to day? 

Our day to day is guided by our Sustainability Strategy. It’s how we balance performance with environmental footprint. We’re aiming to lower carbon emissions through innovation, accelerating renewable energy, and designing with impact at the core. To give you tangible examples: 

• Carbon accounting: By integrating Carbonfact, a product carbon footprint platform, into our workflow, carbon impact has become a primary design parameter alongside performance. The tool offers real-time data on material choice and its impact. This allows our teams to evaluate material options directly on the design board.  
• Circular product guidelines: By collaborating with sorters, recyclers, and industry working groups, we’ve identified how assembly directly impacts a product’s circularity potential. To navigate the trade-offs between high performance and circularity, our Apparel and Accessories teams design with clear circular product criteria: durability, repairability, recyclability and manufacturing efficiency. Throughout 2026, we will put these guidelines to the test across future collections. 

On has grown remarkably quickly into a globally recognised brand. How has that growth shaped the way sustainability and material responsibility are approached internally? Does scale make it easier or harder? 

We are no longer an emerging challenger. We are a global sportswear brand, growing fast in a world that is not moving fast enough in the right direction. When On was still a smaller company, it was easier aligning between teams and stakeholders. Also, the founders and CEOs were more involved in the development process, which can reduce complexity in decision making. 

Now that On is maturing as a brand and company, we are embedding sustainability into the way we operate and make decisions every day. Data plays a central role in this shift. By making impact visible across teams, we create transparency and accountability. Development teams can see the footprint of their choices, allowing innovation to advance both performance and impact. On top of that, we can do things with much higher impact. 

Aside from the topic of your panel, what else have On been doing to improve material sustainability or reduce your environmental impact more broadly? 

We try to steadily reduce the footprint of each product while also moving away from the take-make-waste model.  

LightSpray is a good example for reducing our product footprint. It is a a fully automated single-step process invented by On for the production of high-performance shoe uppers. While traditional shoe upper assembly involves some 200 steps, LightSpray uses a robot arm and 1.5 kilometers of filament to produce an ultra-light one-piece upper in just three minutes. In 2025 we opened the world’s first LightSpray production facility in Zurich, marking a milestone in mastering the manufacturing processes. In 2026, we will expand LightSpray with the opening of our second production facility in South Korea. 

In 2022 On made its first step into a circular economy: The Cyclon subscription model. Runners could sign up to wear our Cyclon products, and return them to us once they were worn out in exchange for a new pair. In 2026 we transitioned the Cyclon subscription service to a  resale-donation-recycling ecosystem. We are incentivizing the return of pre-used On products and enabling the purchase of refurbished gear, helping to keep products in use and materials in circulation for as long as possible. 

If you could change one thing about the way the apparel industry approaches material development and end-of-life thinking, what would it be? 

I would ask brands to have more patience on material readiness and be ready to take some of the lifting on cost. I also believe that we can have greater confidence in consumers adopting new materials. 

Bottle based PET fibers used to be an innovative material. It was more expensive and performed less than virgin PET. But it stuck. There was demand and the industry pushed for it. Through demand and continued improvement, cost went down and performance went up. We can do this again. 

Finally, what draws you to the Textiles Recycling Expo EU, and what do you hope to take away from being in the room with this particular mix of recyclers, innovators, and fellow brands? 

The Textile Recycling Expo is THE annual gathering of the textile recycling industry in Europe. I really like the compact format and the ability to connect easily with so many different actors in the soon to be circular economy. 

Again, taking inspiration from the bottle industry: Waste management is truly a collaborative effort. So it’s crucial to create more spaces to foster collaboration. TRE is one of those spaces.