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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elise Hu. Today's talk is the first of our brand new 2025 TED Fellows Films, adapted for podcasts just for our TED Talks Daily listeners.
We'll be releasing these special episodes showcasing our amazing fellows on certain Fridays throughout the rest of the year and into the new year.
So make sure to stay tuned. The TED fellowship supports a network of global innovators and helps them catapult their world-changing ideas.
We're excited to share their work with you.
Today, we'd like you to meet sustainable textile entrepreneur, TED fellow, Molly Hemstreet.
The Appalachian region on the east coast of the United States is known for its gorgeous green mountains, but it's also known for crippling job losses over the years as various industries have left the region.
Molly, who grew up in Appalachia, decided to do something about this, one piece of clothing at a time.
She is the co-founder of the Industrial Commons, a collective of community-owned manufacturing enterprises and programs that address business resiliency, worker agency, and sustainability.
Today, she shares how she's reimagining a $96 billion industry and creating a model that can be replicated in other rural manufacturing regions all across the world.
After we hear from Molly, stick around for her conversation with TED Fellows Program Director Lily James-Oltz.
It's coming up. When you've had a lot of opportunity taken out of your community, you just feel incredibly powerless.
You're not sure where to start. You also don't have the energy to figure out how do you impact something like an economy.
Often what we really need is a new imagination.
How do we create opportunities that can root wealth and overturn these cycles of generational poverty in our communities?
I'm Molly Hemstreet. I'm the co-founder and co-executive director of the Industrial Commons and I work to bring opportunity to rural communities across southern Appalachia.
Appalachia for me is a really beautiful place and it is where I call home.
I always think the season I'm in is my most favorite season.
There's lots and lots of trees, animals, insects.
It's my favorite place to be. It's also a really complex place.
A lot of the story of Appalachia has been about extraction, things leaving our communities.
Where I grew up, we have been manufacturers and makers for generations, and particularly textile manufacturing.
Textiles are really these workhorses of our world.
It's not just the clothing we wear. If I think about the stint that's in my dad's heart that's keeping that heart beating, that's a medical textile.
If you think about a firefighter that walks into a burning building, they're protected by a textile.
So much of our world is about fiber and is about the textile industry.
And it's really our communities that are helping to ensure that that industry stays vibrant and active in the United States.
But around the 1990s into the 2000s, that work left, leaving our communities with upwards of 15% unemployment.
Entire families just didn't have work. So I really started asking this question of myself, like, what do I do as someone who really wants to stay here, but someone who wants to be sure that there's opportunity, not just for me and my family, but for my friends and neighbors?
There were several things that I wanted to be different from what I had seen coming down around me.
I wanted this to be a profitable enterprise.
I wanted it to be about people. And I wanted to be sure that we were making things that weren't hurting the environment.
And I knew that the people in my community had incredible skill and incredible knowledge.
And so Opportunity Threads was started as an employee-owned company around developing sustainable textiles.
The idea of employee ownership is just really, really basic.
And I think we can all relate to it. If we work really hard for something, that reward should come back to us.
We all want to feel like we're valued. We all want to feel like the opportunity that we create, the profits that we create, we have a say in those.
Opportunity Threads is a really magical place.
They're one of the largest upcycling facilities in the U.S., upcycling upwards of 60,000 t-shirts every week.
They're a profitable company, a really brilliant, bright light in our community.
I'm very proud of that work. From there, I was like, oh, this is kind of cool.
This seems to be working. Let me find some more help.
I wasn't an economist, didn't have a business major, didn't consider myself an entrepreneur.
What I did know is that I cared very deeply about where I lived.
And so we started building a network. We called it the Carolina Textile District with this whole idea of being big by being small together.
So we were going to band together in order to build scale.
And then after we built that, we built the Industrial Commons.
What we do with the Industrial Commons is we support workers, we support businesses.
Some of those businesses we help to buy and convert to employee-owned companies.
Some of those businesses we start ourselves.
We've drawn the attention of folks like the National Science Foundation, who have chosen us as one of 10 innovation communities across the country.
And it was really the organization that I needed when I was getting started that I didn't have.
One of the projects that the industrial commons right now is working on is called material return and What we do at material return is we take back the region's textile waste We grind it up and we send it through this big machine and then we're able to make that back into a yarn something that might be sold for three cents a pound.
If we can put it through our system, it can come out on the other side and we can sell it for $9 a pound.
So we're engineering value back into this waste stream, just like we're trying to engineer opportunity back into our communities.
Bob has really been the leader that's helped Material Return get started.
He's somebody that grew up in Burke County, started to work when he was 16 in a sawmill.
What's so neat about Bob's story is, you know, Bob is still working in manufacturing.
In fact, he's working in these same plants where his uncle and his dad used to work.
But now he's an owner of that plant. He has a say in manufacturing. and what's going to happen at that facility.
And he's really one of the leaders. So Bob, for me, really represents why I come to work every day.
We call ourselves, we're long-haul people.
We're in this for the long haul. This isn't just a project of six months.
This is a project of generations. Right now there's 27,000 workers working in the textile industry.
We would love to see half of those workers engaged in some type of enterprise or economic opportunity that we're creating through our ecosystem.
My hope is not just Southern Appalachia, but all over, that there's more say, there's more wealth that can be rooted.
There's less extraction and there's really just a more thriving working class.
Every community has opportunity. Every community has something good in it.
Every community has a future where you can show up every day, you can work hard, you can get ahead, but that's not at the expense of the person beside you getting ahead. that there's opportunities for your kids, where there's a lightness and there's a joy, where you really feel like you're not staying because you're forced to stay, but you're staying because you've chosen to stay.
We forget that we are part of the economy.
We forget that we have power in it. It just takes a few people to start, and you don't have to necessarily have a complex set of skills.
What you really have to have is a deep care and a deep love and a deep knowledge of where you're planted and where you want to grow.
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T's and C's apply. This is Rose. Rose's flight is delayed again.
At this point, she has walked the entire terminal twice and has memorized every news headline on the airport TV.
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Free e-books library. It's on Prime. And now a special conversation between TED fellow Molly Hemstreet and TED fellows program director Lily James Olds.
Okay, I'd love to start with why textiles?
Why is that where you started in terms of trying to shift things and create opportunities in your community?
Sure. So textiles and the furniture industry have been in our communities for generations.
In fact, we still have one of the largest concentration of textile and furniture manufacturers in as a cluster, as an industrial cluster here in our region.
And so as I was thinking about what do I want to do and how do we revitalize the future of the economy that we are part of, it was to not necessarily throw out the generations of legacy that have made our communities what they are.
There have been struggles, but it was to really think about how could we build on that legacy to create an economic future that we could all thrive in.
So it was what was in the ground here. It was what was already in our communities.
It just needed the ability to revision what the future of those industries could look like.
Right. That makes sense. So really those roots that you talked about were sort of already in place and you decided to start from there.
So when you talked about starting the Carolina Textile Network and now the Industrial Commons, you mentioned that you aimed to be big by being small together.
I really love this and I feel like it's an important way to reconsider how we're approaching collaboration and Thank you so much.
I appreciate questions on collaboration because collaboration is really tricky.
It's something we hear a lot about, but it's often we don't get the mechanics of how you be a good collaborator.
So when we started the Carolina Textile District, we talked a lot about this word called coopetition.
That's not a word we came up with. We heard from somewhere, but I love the spirit of it because it is about you are competing on some things, but you're also collaborating.
You're cooperating. And so where that comes from is really around necessity.
And we are in communities that have a lot of necessity.
And you realize that you need each other to solve problems.
You can't go it alone. And we often have a very go it alone mentality in the U.S.
And what we found is we needed each other to solve the biggest problems.
And that is really why network building and collaborations and now through what we're using as business consortium of folks coming together, businesses coming together to solve big economic problems is where we have landed.
And so I grew up in a community where there were really big manufacturing facilities and one of those big plants would go down. that had 1,500 people working in there.
And the devastation of that was huge. And so what I really was drawn to was rebuilding economic models that were more resilient.
So if you have 50 plants of 50 people, you're still putting a lot of people to work.
But if one of those plants goes down, you're not taking everyone with you.
And if one of those plants is successful, they can drive success throughout the entire ecosystem.
And this isn't a model that, you know, is new.
We look a lot to other models, particularly in Europe.
We look a lot to the models of Northern Italy and where they have built some of the best manufacturing networks by, again, using this idea of being small companies. putting small companies, smaller companies together into really big, powerful networks that have a lot of resiliency to them.
And so we've taken a lot of our blueprint from other regions of the world that have used this model.
In some ways, it's so obvious, but I do feel like your sort of curiosity and ability to investigate these other models sort of from that beginner mind that you talked about of saying, you know, I wasn't an entrepreneur.
I didn't go to business school in this way.
It's really inspiring to think about that.
So you talk about how Southern Appalachia has been hit so incredibly hard by unemployment and, you know, that the area saw upwards of 15% job loss. which is really what compelled you to get involved in the ways that you have.
Give us an update. Where do things stand today?
And have you seen any shifts in the community since you helped start the industrial commons?
Yes, we have certainly seen shifts in the community.
We're not at 15% job loss anymore. We have recovered in a strong way.
We want to be sure that manufacturing always has a place in communities, particularly in rural communities. and that we really can have the ability to make and create things.
And in our case, recycle things, take our waste and make it back into wealth for our communities, which is what we're doing through our work in the circular economy.
But we are seeing Recovery, however, I can't be in this conversation without naming the devastation that our communities went through with Hurricane Helene.
And that, again, was a huge setback for many people in Western North Carolina.
But what's wonderful is when we build these ecosystems, they solve problems together and those networks create resiliency for people to pull together and solve not only the problems of our economy, but also whatever problems our communities might face.
I'm really excited because we have our big groundbreaking for the 30-acre brownfield that we are developing.
And so we'll have 400 people come from all over the country to help us launch this innovation campus that is taking off.
And one of the things that is so beautiful is we're having...
Workers that were on this plant throughout the 80s and 90s before the plant burned down and it sat as a brownfield in the heart of our community for almost 20 years to come back and tell their stories.
So it is about revitalizing new manufacturing, but it's also about holding and cherishing the stories in our community as well.
And so we don't ever want to leave the human aspect out of what we're doing.
We can drive markets, we can create industry, but at the end of the day, we do this for our people.
You mentioned so many great examples of the work you've done with your collaborators and otherwise.
I'm curious what would be a sort of hope for you in terms of keeping jobs and industry in the area?
So as we mentioned before, there has been a downturn in manufacturing all across the United States, but particularly in communities like ours.
And when you think about the textile industry, it's not always great images that come to many people's minds.
You see those pictures and think about, okay, that's a hard, dirty, not well-lit place to work.
But Truly, the future of manufacturing and textiles as part of that is a really innovative, dynamic place with good, high-quality jobs.
Now, we have to create that future that we want to see, but we are certainly actively doing that.
So our hope is out of this region will spring a whole regional ability to think about how taking the waste in our supply chains and the waste in our communities and turning them back into wealth and doing that within the textile industry.
And that is really at the heart of what textile circularity is.
And the interesting thing is we have all the infrastructure to do that in our communities.
We have the plants that can take the fibers back and grind them up and spin them into new yarns and get them back into the supply chain.
And so we're reactivating a lot of that, building on the knowledge that has been in our communities for generations and connecting to brands and connecting to consumers through both the stories and the really wonderful products that are coming out of our region.
That's so exciting. I mean, I think what's really fascinating to me about what you do is that we so often hear environmental causes pitted against the issue of communities and job loss.
And what you're doing is so actively proving that working to support the climate and climate movements can actually support job and industry growth rather than destroy it.
I'd love to hear you speak to this a little bit more and how do we keep shifting the narrative away from the kind of one against the other mentality and instead recognize how these can be mutually beneficial?
So I do love the name of the industrial commons because there's a tension in it, right?
There's this tension of industry and the common good or common access can't necessarily work together.
But it is often in those creative tensions where we come up with the best solutions.
I really love this idea from ecology of the edge effect, and I might not have it exactly scientifically right, but the spirit of it in my mind is that where we often think that, oh, you're either going to have strong manufacturing or you're going to have to choose between the environment.
When manufacturers can really think with environmentalism in mind and the environmentalists and environmental products can really think about environmental good manufacturing practices, that is where we can really scale solutions.
And so I'll be honest, Lily, like I love that tension.
I think that is where we can drive a lot of creativity for true solutions that can get us out of places where we have been stuck.
I'm curious with what you just said in mind, which I think is so fitting, how can we nurture and create that sense of imagination and possibility that is needed to take us forward?
Mm-hmm. Well, I think there's always the individual action that someone can take.
And while it can feel lonely, our individual actions do drive to a bigger collective.
It's really exciting and grounding to be part of a community that is of makers.
Like we make things, we create things, we can see the things, we can see the positive and the negative impacts of what we make together.
So for people to remember to get in touch with the things that they're making, the food they're eating, the clothes that they're wearing and have deep knowledge there, that is such an important place to begin because it starts with knowledge.
It starts with how things are made and then how things are remade, how they become part of a cycle.
And that's what our economies are. They're these cycles and we have a role in them.
And then as we move into the larger collective of being part of a community, it's really understanding what your assets are.
Often rural communities are looked at as all the things we don't have and all the things we're missing.
And being from a rural community and banding together with other people from our rural community, you realize how many assets you really do have and that you can build upon.
And when you start to build upon your assets and you start to believe in each other, you start to build power and the capacity to shape things.
And that is really, I think, how you start to go from the individual to a bigger sense of the collective and to being able to shape things like an economy and shape futures as well.
I love that. You mentioned learning from the mistakes and the successes.
What's an example, Molly, of a mistake or a negative, as you said, that you learned from and that helped you evolve?
So there are a lot of mistakes along the way.
And sometimes we've started companies that were a little too soon.
And I think of one company that we tried to get started.
And, you know, on paper, all the pieces were in place.
But then it just like it didn't come together.
And we went back and we really defined some of those pieces that you need.
The demand really has to be there. And really the passion of the person to move it forward has to be there as well.
And so that was a company that we got going and then we stopped and we said, it's time is not right yet.
Sometimes I think innovators get too far out and we don't remember that transformation happens incrementally.
We often think that that next right step is not big enough or bold enough.
And what I found with time is that it is that incremental step when you put them together that at the end of that journey is transformation.
And sometimes we have to be patient. So I think I'm often at fault for not being patient enough, not being incremental enough.
And that is what I love about the journey that we're on and being from the community that I'm from here is committed to a 50-year vision.
This is what I've committed my life to as many people have, but you can be a little more patient and be a little more incremental.
And then start to look backwards to see, wow, we've gotten to something transformational because we took incremental steps.
So I think it's sometimes when we've taken too big a step is where we have failed and had to go backwards and start again.
No, I appreciate that. And thanks for that honest answer.
I think also with that patience, what I find inspiring about what you do is you're always asking the next question.
You know, you're always looking for once I've learned one thing, what is that next question that can help me understand this or the process or the system more deeply?
And I think that's something that in the time that I've known you, I find really inspiring and that I would like to apply more and more to my own life.
So thank you. This has been such a great conversation.
Thank you, Molly, for joining us and all the fascinating and important work that you're doing.
Well, thank you, Lily, to all your team.
Being part of TED is really, really inspirational.
And I feel really honored to be part of this community.
So thank you. That was Molly Hemstreet, a 2025 TED Fellow.
To learn more about the TED Fellows program and watch all the TED Fellows films, go to fellows.ted.com.
And that's it for today. This episode was fact-checked by Aparna Nathan and Ava Dasher.
The audio you heard at the top there comes from the short film made by Divya Gidangi and Owen McLean.
Story edited by Corey Hajim and produced by Ian Lowe.
Production manager is Searing Dolma. Additional support from Lily James Olds, Liani Horster, and Allegra Pearl.
This episode was mixed by Lucy Little and Christopher Faisy-Bogan.
TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tansika Sangmarnivong.
Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.
I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
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