Meet Christa Marie Clark
Co-Founder and Director of Design
ABOUT YA GIRL
Material Union started out of a desire to create a business that will benefit generations to come and bring us home to our connection with the earth.
Austin has always been my home and the longevity of our community is worth fighting for. I come from a long line of Texans with tough hides and tender hearts that didn’t have much, but they had each other and they knew how to mend their things. Something many of us are starting to rediscover for ourselves.
Everything we do has a cascade effect, wether we see it or not. So in building this recycling facility, I sought out a way to use diverting textiles from landfill as an avenue to create fair-wage jobs within a worker-owned company. Being cooperatively owned, we’re directly building communal wealth and ownership within marginalized communities.
MY BACKGROUND
I’ve worked with startups and Fortune 500 companies over the past decade of being a software and branding designer. I’ve assisted c-suites with securing multi-million dollar projects and have raised hundreds of thousands on my own for several early-stage startups and events like SXSW. Many of these projects have been creating software to optimize manufacturing, logistics, and make sense of large swaths of data and use that data to combat the effects of climate change. I’m excited to put this knowledge to use to tackle issues within the wild west of textile waste.
Creating networks of mutual aid and reducing waste has been a passion of mine since childhood. My first venture was beginning a trash pickup club for kids in the neighborhood when I was 7. I even made us hand-drawn tote bags. My parents had no idea what to do with me.
This yearning to seek reciprocity amongst humanity and our world has also been reflected through my work with ATX Free Fridge. We provide a no-barriers access to food and resources to vulnerable community members and I am a fridge host myself. Upcycling and distributing resources in a way that benefits others while diverting waste from landfills is deeply personal to me. Which is why Material Union is the kind of mission worth my life.
Meet Christina Morales
Co-Founder and Director of Operations
I’ve worked in operations for commercial composting companies and have been an active advocate for various initiatives that have committed to waste reduction at scale for over 6 years. This includes being a Zero Waste Block Leader in Austin, TX and starting Nurture BK, a volunteer-led compost drop off that diverted 100,000 pounds of food scraps at one location over the span of 3 years.
I come from a diverse background in managing teams. Before transitioning into environmentally-focused work, I spent a decade as a production wizard in the entertainment industry, equitably sourcing diverse talent and finding the perfect fit for specific roles. This has given me a natural way of working with people and ensuring the right people are matched with the right job and things hum along smoothly.
About the name Material Union
The name captures a sentiment to create union and reciprocity between each other, our relationship with the earth, and the materials we are polluting it with.
We’re also unionizing our entire workforce and we wanted to nod to the power of unionized labor forces and the importance of protecting all workers rights. Especially when fair wages and safe working conditions are so often kept from workers around the world.
