Tod Kean

What inspired you to create Bonded Logic? Were you always planning on being a green company from the get-go?

Our background is in the recyclable industry—our board members ran a materials recovery facility for many years, so we've always been diverting municipal waste, like newspapers, from the landfill waste stream into durable, sellable products. That became a fairly sizable company, and we ended up with a lot of newspaper, so I got involved in doing research on how to formally stabilize ground-up newspaper to form packs, padding and cushioning materials. We started researching alternative raw materials that were going into the landfill and came across textile waste: t-shirts, socks, underwear, and predominately blue-jeans, which we're using a lot of today. Bonded Logic is currently diverting about 300 tons of denim waste a month from the landfills.

Is it safe to say you were ahead of the curve, so to speak?

Oh yes. My dad had one of the first composting patents in the United States. He was involved in landfill and gravel operations, so we've always had a mantra of being green. Our family's been involved in recycling for over thirty years now, but Bonded Logic, which was born out of those efforts, is about fifteen years old.

Was the idea to use denim a "light bulb" kind of moment, or were there years of research and trial and error to determine the right material?

It was research. First we needed to see if it would achieve the physical properties that were necessary to put it into our products. Then we needed to see if there was an abundance of the material, and we had to look at the economics as well. Being green is great, but you've got to make it economical too. We all need to make a living.

Can you explain what makes denim insulation different, and how it works?

The traditional type of insulation on the market is fiberglass batting. Fiberglass performs thermally and is a good insulator, but it does have some negative health effects. It's made of silica glass, and there are respiratory concerns as well as a nuisance factor in terms of itch. We wanted to get away from that. Denim is cotton, so it's going to be non-irritating—wouldn't you rather be wrapped up in cotton blanket?—and the thermal properties are equivalent to traditional insulation, but where you're going to see a big change is the acoustical: We're far superior in the acoustical arena. We do other industries besides residential insulation; we service the OEM [original equipment manufacturer] markets for appliances and automotives. For example, for one of our dishwasher companies, Bosch Siemans, we supply all their North American insulations, and they've been rated the quietest dishwasher on the market for the last seven years.

So there are dishwashers out there with denim inside them?

Oh yes, there are trash compactors, whirlpools, laundry units and Ford Expedition sub-woofers that have our cotton in them. These companies like it because the acoustical properties are so good.

Do you only use landfill denim?

We have a very good relationship with the Cotton Inc. people, and we'll be embarking on our fourth year with them for the denim drive. What they do is go around the States to different college campuses and collect denim, while promoting the benefits of cotton and how durable it is. We take that denim and convert it into insulation. Last year, we collected over 50,000 pieces, and ultimately ended up donating that material to the Habitat for Humanity program for Katrina victims. This year, we'll be helping insulate over 100 homes with Cotton Inc. in the Katrina region.

Is this something that anyone could install in their homes themselves?

If it's behind your sheet rock that you're insulating, that's pretty labor intensive and you'll have to be tearing down walls. But access to attics, crawl spaces and unfinished basements are more accessible and a lot of people have done that for the acoustical properties. It is a do-it-yourself product: It does not require any protective clothing, and it doesn't itch. A lot of people just take it and tear it and they install it themselves.

Has the attention you’ve gotten from high-profile customers like Adrian Grenier had any effect on the business? Are you trying to reach out to more celebrities?

We did a big project with Polo and with Extreme Makeover. With Adrian, any time we get that kind of P.R. we embrace that, but we're not actively targeting celebrities; we don't have the means to do that.

How has the recent popularity of the green movement affected your work?

It's definitely helped. We feel like we're one of the pioneers for green recycling, but we fully embrace it. Seven years ago, the United States Green Building Council had their first trade show in Austin Texas, and I believe there were three to 5,000 people there, and we were the only insulation company displayed at the show. The most recent show was in Chicago, with over 25,000 people and former president Bill Clinton as the keynote speaker. There were six insulation companies. Ours was the only cotton company, though; the rest of them were fiberglass and foam people trying to jump on the green bandwagon. Since we got involved in this business prior, we feel like it's a solid product with or without the green movement.

What was the most memorable eco-challenge Bonded Logic faced and how did you resolve it?

One of the things we take pride in is that we have a zero-waste processing facility. During start-up and trials, because no one had really done this to the magnitude we have, we generated quite a bit of waste internally, so it was very important to our board members to ensure that what we were generating wasn't going to end up in the landfill itself. We had to create some mechanical equipment that could re-grind up our internal waste, and put it back into the process.

There have been rumors going around that some of the Habitat For Humanity homes were having problems with their denim insulation becoming moldy and needing to be replaced. Is that a potential problem in most homes?

I think what that goes back to is that there used to be two manufacturers of cotton insulation, and there was a Habitat For Humanity project ten or twelve years ago, down in Texas, and they actually had a situation where a welder's torch ignited a small section of a wall. That's been the stigma that I've heard about the most. I've also heard about mold, but that wasn't our product. We treat every one of our fibers with a boric acid-based solution, and actually it repels mold and mildew better than fiberglass.

If everyone in the world all of a sudden decided they wanted denim insulation, would there be enough?

No, there's not enough material. It's a premium product; there is a small cost premium over traditional types of insulation. But the amount of raw materials and glass and silt that go into fiberglass insulation is millions of millions of tons. What we're doing is diverting mountains and mountains away from the landfills, so if we can maximize that waste stream, we feel we're doing something good.