SUSTAINABLE FIBRE
Nearly half the world’s clothing is made of polyester. And for good reason. It’s long lasting, holds colour well, quick drying, and resistant to creasing for a start. Throw in the ability to create high performance fabrics that wick sweat, block rain and wind and you start to see the reason for that popularity.
Since 2022 we have been transitioning many of our products to recycled polyester. We've designed these icon as a symbol for garments made with recycled polyester. Keep a lookout for them!
Recycled polyester, often called rPET, is made primarily from recycled plastic bottles. Around 60 million of these bottles are thrown away each day. For recycled polyester, these are diverted from landfill, ocean and incinerator, then melted down and re-spun into new polyester fibre.
As a replacement for virgin polyester, this immediately reduces the load on the planet’s finite resources. What’s more, a 2017 life-cycle analysis found that the manufacturing process generates 79% less emissions than producing the virgin fibre.
To ensure we have transparency into, and verification of this recycled content, in May 2023 we became certified to GRS (Global Recycled Standard) and RCS (Recycled Claim Standard).
The ‘chain of custody’ that is central to these certifications give us the ability to trace recycled input, for each batch, right back to the source. This is important because raw materials travel through multiple stages and entities in the process of being spun, dyed, knit, cut, and sewn. The chain of custody ensures that what goes in, comes out.
The recycled fibres used in our garments are verified to meet the ISO definition of ‘recycled’, with both pre-consumer and post-consumer material accepted. View garments here that are either already GRS or RCS certified, or transitioning to.
Read more about GRS/RCS here. https://textileexchange.org/recycled-claim-global-recycled-standard/