Etology, a fashion tech company embracing circular economy principles will be our next featured business for Tech Tuesday.

With the rapid growth of intelligent assets and the internet of things, the introduction of smart products has the potential to facilitate a sustainable and circular economy. Information technology has the potential to move us beyond product lifecycle management, to product self-management, where objects can communicate and direct their own path through the circular economy.

Smart products can trigger specific information on what to do when it reaches its end-of-life, including how to recycle, up-cycle, disassemble, remanufacture, sell or exchange. To enable the sustainable performance of intelligent assets, Etology correlates a product’s unique identification number with information essential to optimizing a product lifecycle. By using item level tags to sort apparel and textiles at the end of their lives, Etology enables the cascade of each type of textile to more suitable and higher-value applications than is the case today.

We caught up with founder Natasha Franck to discuss smart products and the pros and cons that go along with them…

Read the interview here.