Ep 31. Clean Run: Detoxing the Running Jacket I Part 1 - Fibre and Fabric with Hitesh Manglani, Jeanne Begon-Lours and Khorceska Batyrova

Have you taken a close look at the label on your running jacket? It probably mentions a list of materials such as nylon, polyester, elastane — but what it doesn't say is that these materials are born from fossil fuels, made with toxic chemistry, and designed in a way that makes them almost impossible to recycle or break down at the end of their life.

In this first episode of Clean Run, host Mili Tharakan takes an ordinary running jacket bought from the high street and deconstructs it — layer by layer, fabric by fabric — to ask: what would it look like if we rebuilt it from scratch, without the petrochemicals and toxins that are so embedded in performance wear today?

To answer that question, Mili is joined by three founders who are each replacing one of the jacket's core fossil-fuel derived fibres with something radically different.

Guests:

Hitesh Manglani, CEO & Founder of SuperCarb — processing sugar molecules from seaweed and food waste into a high-performance polyester alternative that is inherently antibacterial, flame retardant, and free from microplastic shedding.

Jeanne Begon-Lours, CEO & Co-founder of Tera Mira — developing the world's first fully bio-based elastane alternative made from seaweed, designed to replace the hidden villain that blocks recycling in almost every garment made today.

Khorceska Batyrova, CEO & Co-founder of OzoneBio — turning wood waste and nutshells into bio-based Nylon 66, producing the same high-performance fibre without the toxic adipic acid manufacturing process that releases nitrous oxide — a gas 300 times more damaging than CO₂.

Not petrochemicals but organic waste is the new raw material. Wood bark, nutshells, seaweed, citrus peels — the feedstocks these founders are using are things the world produces in enormous quantities and currently throws away. The running jacket of the future may well start in a forest floor or a food processing facility.

In this episode:

• Why nylon, polyester and elastane are so dominant in performance wear — and what makes them so hard to walk away from
• How bio-based materials can match the performance of petroleum-based fibres — and where the trade-offs still exist
• The chicken-and-egg problem of scale that every material innovator faces with large brands
• What it actually takes to bring three new materials together into a single garment
• Honest reflections on favourite failures, founder wellbeing, and what keeps these innovators going

The Clean Run series is inspired by the Performance Without Toxicity exhibition, curated by The Mills Fabrica in partnership with Goldwin, open until 26th June 2026 at Fabrica X in London. Entry is free.

Clean Run is a three-part series. Episode 2 explores the hidden chemistry of finishing — the dyes, coatings, and construction decisions that can undermine even the cleanest fibre

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Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash

Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman