Reprogramming Fashion's DNA to Sustainability with Technology

The fashion industry has a dirty secret everyone knows about but nobody wants to fix: It's responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions and produces enough textile waste to fill landfills for generations.

Fast fashion made clothes cheap and accessible. It also made them disposable.

Rachna Sarup isn't trying to convince people to buy less. She's building technology to make sustainable fashion the default, not the premium alternative. As CEO of B77 Tech Styles, she's working on everything from 3D body mapping that reduces returns to supply chain systems that track every step from farm to finished garment.

Her thesis is simple: Sustainability can't just be a nice-to-have feature for affluent consumers. It has to be embedded into how fashion works at scale.

This is how you reprogram an entire industry.

Key Takeaways

• Fashion's carbon problem is massive: The industry produces 10% of global emissions—more than international flights and maritime shipping combined
• Technology enables sustainable scale: 3D body mapping reduces returns by 30-40%, cutting waste and emissions from shipping
• Transparency is non-negotiable: Modern consumers want to know where their clothes come from—blockchain and IoT enable end-to-end traceability
• Fast fashion's real cost is hidden: That $10 shirt has environmental and social costs that don't show up on the price tag
• Circular fashion is the future: Moving from "make-use-dispose" to "make-use-return-remake" is how fashion becomes sustainable
• Sustainable doesn't mean expensive: Technology is making eco-friendly fashion increasingly cost-competitive with fast fashion

The Full Conversation

You're tackling one of the world's most polluting industries. What made you think technology could solve this?

Because fashion's problems are fundamentally operational problems, not just ethical ones.

Take returns. In online fashion, return rates can hit 30-40%. Every return means shipping emissions, repackaging, sometimes the product can't be resold and ends up as waste.

Or take overproduction. Brands manufacture way more than they can sell because they're guessing at demand. The excess ends up in landfills or burned.

These aren't problems you solve by appealing to people's better nature. You solve them with better systems, better data, better technology.

That's what drew me to this space. Not just the mission, but the realization that we could make sustainable fashion more profitable than unsustainable fashion if we built the right tools.

Hot take: Sustainable fashion will only scale when it's cheaper and easier than fast fashion, not when it's a premium product for conscious consumers. Technology gets us there; guilt-based marketing doesn't.

Tell me about the 3D body mapping technology you're working on.

It's about getting the fit right the first time.

We use 3D scanning to create accurate body measurements. When you order clothes, they're made to actually fit your body, not a generic size chart that fits nobody perfectly.

The impact is twofold: One, customers get clothes that fit properly, which they're more likely to keep and wear. Two, it dramatically reduces returns.

Lower returns mean less shipping, less packaging waste, less energy spent on logistics. Plus, when clothes actually fit well, people wear them longer instead of letting them sit in a closet unworn.

It sounds simple, but the amount of waste we can eliminate just by getting sizing right is enormous.

Most sustainable fashion brands are premium-priced. How do you make this work for average consumers?

That's the challenge we're trying to solve.

Right now, sustainable fashion is expensive because it's niche. Organic fabrics cost more, ethical manufacturing costs more, smaller production runs cost more.

But as technology improves and volume increases, those costs come down. Ten years ago, organic cotton was 3x the price of regular cotton. Now it's maybe 30% more, and in some cases, comparable.

The same thing is happening with manufacturing. Technology is making it possible to produce sustainable fashion at scale without the massive cost premium.

Our goal is to reach price parity with fast fashion within a few years. Not by cutting corners, but by using technology to eliminate inefficiencies.

You talk a lot about supply chain traceability. Why does that matter to consumers?

People want to know what they're buying and where it comes from.

Is this cotton organic or pesticide-heavy? Was it made in a factory with fair labor practices or a sweatshop? What's the carbon footprint of this garment?

For a long time, fashion supply chains were black boxes. Even brands didn't always know where their stuff came from.

We're using blockchain and IoT sensors to track products from raw material to finished product. Every step is recorded and verifiable.

This isn't just feel-good marketing. It's accountability. Brands can't greenwash when customers can see the actual data.

Hot take: In five years, fashion brands that can't prove their sustainability claims with verifiable data will be treated like food brands that don't list ingredients—inherently untrustworthy.

What's the biggest misconception people have about sustainable fashion?

That it's about buying less or sacrificing style.

Look, I'm not going to tell people to stop buying clothes. That's not realistic and it's not going to happen.

Sustainable fashion is about making better choices within the system we have. It's about clothes that last longer, that are made responsibly, that can be recycled or composted at end of life.

You can still have style, variety, affordability. You just need the system behind it to be designed differently.

The misconception that sustainable = boring or expensive is what's held back adoption for years. We're proving you can have both sustainability and desirability.

Let's talk about circular fashion. What does that actually mean in practice?

It means designing clothes with their entire lifecycle in mind, not just the point of sale.

In linear fashion, you make a product, sell it, customer uses it, it ends up in a landfill. Done.

In circular fashion, you design for durability, repairability, and recyclability from the start. When the customer is done with it, you take it back, either resell it, refurbish it, or break it down to make new products.

We're working on systems where customers can return used garments. If they're still in good condition, we resell them. If not, we recycle the materials into new fabric.

The economics are actually better in the long run because you're not constantly sourcing new raw materials. But it requires rethinking the entire business model.

What's the role of AI in what you're building?

AI is huge for demand forecasting and inventory optimization.

One of the biggest sources of waste in fashion is overproduction. Brands make too much because they don't know what will sell.

We use AI to analyze trends, predict demand more accurately, and help brands produce closer to actual demand. Less overstock means less waste.

AI also helps with personalization—showing customers products they're actually likely to buy and keep, reducing impulse purchases that end up returned or unworn.

And on the manufacturing side, AI optimizes fabric cutting to minimize waste. In traditional garment manufacturing, you might waste 15-20% of fabric in cutting. AI-driven cutting can reduce that to under 5%.

You've been in this industry for years. How has the conversation around sustainability changed?

It's gone from niche concern to business imperative.

Five years ago, sustainability was a CSR checkbox for big brands or a differentiator for tiny startups. Mainstream brands mostly ignored it.

Now, customers are demanding it, investors are measuring it, regulations are requiring it. Brands that don't have a credible sustainability strategy are getting left behind.

The change has been faster than I expected, honestly. There's still a massive gap between talk and action, but at least sustainability is now part of every conversation in the industry.

Hot take: The fashion brands that survive the next decade won't be the ones with the best marketing. They'll be the ones who figured out how to be profitable and sustainable simultaneously.

What's been the hardest part of building B77?

Changing an industry that's been doing things the same way for decades.

Fashion is traditional. Supply chains are established. Factories are set in their ways. Getting people to adopt new technologies and processes is hard.

We're not just selling software; we're selling a different way of thinking about fashion production and consumption.

That means education, patience, proving ROI, dealing with resistance. It's slow, especially compared to pure software businesses where you can ship updates and iterate fast.

But the impact when it works is proportionally larger. We're not just optimizing ad clicks; we're reducing carbon emissions and waste at scale.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the fashion industry tomorrow, what would it be?

Make brands accountable for the entire lifecycle of their products, not just the point of sale.

Right now, brands have no responsibility for what happens to clothes after they're sold. They can produce 10,000 units, sell 6,000, burn the rest, and it's not their problem.

If brands had to take back and deal with unsold inventory or end-of-life products, they'd design differently, produce differently, sell differently.

That accountability would transform the industry faster than any amount of consumer awareness campaigns.

What's your message to founders building in climate tech or sustainability?

Make sure the economics work without relying on people's guilt or altruism.

Sustainable products need to be better, not just more ethical. They need to win on product quality, on price, on convenience.

The brands that scale aren't the ones telling customers "buy this to save the planet." They're the ones offering genuinely better products that happen to also be sustainable.

Lead with value, not values. The impact follows.

Final Thoughts

Rachna's approach to sustainable fashion is refreshingly pragmatic. No guilt trips, no asking consumers to sacrifice, no pretending individual choices will solve systemic problems.

Just technology, systems thinking, and a clear-eyed view of what it takes to make sustainability scale beyond the conscious consumer niche.

The fashion industry's environmental impact is real and massive. But fixing it doesn't require everyone to become minimalists or pay premium prices for eco-friendly alternatives.

It requires rebuilding the infrastructure of how fashion works—from design to production to end-of-life. Making sustainability the path of least resistance rather than the virtuous exception.

For founders building in climate tech, Rachna's lesson is clear: Don't build for people who already care. Build systems that make the right choice the easy choice, regardless of values.

Because at scale, convenience beats consciousness every time. The brands that crack that code don't just do well—they actually change industries.

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