One Technology, Two Problems: Tersus Recognized in Fast Company's 2026 Innovation by Design Awards

Tersus Solutions has been named a finalist in Fast Company's 2026 Innovation by Design Awards, in the Established Excellence category recognizing companies that have been in business between five and fourteen years. Now in its fifteenth year, the program honored 312 projects across disciplines from architecture to AI.

Design awards usually go to things you can see. Ours went to both a process that happens inside a sealed vessel and to the refurbishment and recovery processes built from the ground up, in a facility in Colorado, for brands and firefighters across North America.

The process

Liquid CO₂ cleaning is waterless. It leaves no residue. The CO₂ is recaptured and reused rather than released. It uses roughly a third of the energy of conventional cleaning. And it's gentle enough to handle technical and delicate materials that water-based washing degrades over repeated cycles.

That last point is the one that matters commercially. If a resale program can't get a returned item back to a condition worth selling, the program doesn't work. If cleaning shortens the life of the garment it's meant to extend, the sustainability math collapses. CO₂ cleaning solves for both.

What it unlocks in recommerce

Roughly 84% of clothing is estimated to end up in landfills or incinerators. Brands know this. Most of them have a resale ambition somewhere in a deck. The gap between ambition and operation is where programs die; because a used product needs to be processed, one item at a time, in unpredictable conditions, so that every piece needs individual decisions.

Tersus built the operations infrastructure around that problem. Sorting, grading, cleaning, repair, upcycling, recycling, and fulfillment, integrated under one roof, with single-SKU logistics as the operating discipline. Brands including The North Face, Arc'teryx, REI, and lululemon run programs on it. No two look alike, because no two brands have the same product, customer, or commitment.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

In 2025 and early 2026, seven new partners came onto the platform. In February 2025, a licensing partnership with CWS Workwear extended the technology into EMEA. Our Calgary facility opened in August of 2026.

What it unlocks in fire

The same process does something else entirely.

Firefighters carry elevated cancer risk, and a meaningful part of that exposure comes from contaminants that stay in turnout gear after conventional washing. In testing, CO₂ cleaning removed up to 98% of the harmful carcinogens compared with roughly 56% for traditional water-based cleaning.

In 2025, Tersus systems decontaminated more than 10,500 sets of fire gear for over 90 departments across the United States.

Two industries. One technology. That range is the reason the recognition landed where it did — not in a product category, but in a category about what a company has built over time.

What's next

Capacity expansion and continued growth across both sides of the business. The honor recognizes work already done. The interesting part is what it makes possible.

See the full list of 2026 Innovation by Design honorees → [LINK TO CATEGORY LIST]

Interested in building a recommerce program or bringing CO₂ decontamination to your department? [Get in touch].