Sustainability. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. Look up sustainable in a dictionary and you’re presented with: able to be maintained at a certain level or rate. But what does sustainable actually mean when it comes to fabric? 

Whether a fabric is sustainable isn't just about how it’s made, but how the raw materials are extracted and what happens once it reaches the end of its life. 

It’s no secret that plastic is causing major problems. It takes hundreds of years to break down, meaning that every piece of plastic ever created is still on this planet in some form. Exploring how discarded plastics can be re-used in textiles is one way to tackle this. 

ECONYL®

ECONYL® is regenerated nylon thread, created from rescued industrial and ocean plastics. Identical to virgin nylon thread, it is infinitely recyclable and can be repurposed repeatedly without ever losing its quality. This means new products can be created without using new resources - something that our planet definitely doesn’t have infinite amounts of.  

ECONYL® begins life being rescued from landfills and oceans around the world. A unique cleaning process restores it back to its original purity, before it's made into textiles. Once it reaches the end of its life, it can go back into the regeneration process and become a brand new product. 

For every 10,000 tons of raw ECONYL® material used, over 57,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions are avoided* - good for you, good for the planet. 

REPREVE

Billions of plastic bottles end up in landfill worldwide - in the UK alone, over 7.5 billion of them are used every year.* REPREVE provides the solution.

REPREVE is high-performance yarn, engineered from recycled plastic bottles. Using REPREVE means plastic that would otherwise end up in landfill gets a new lease of life. Bottles are collected from around the world and deep cleaned, before being chopped into plastic chips and spun into yarn. Reliable, durable and high quality, REPREVE is renowned for the wicking and thermal control properties required of technical performance fabrics. 

So far, over 15 billion plastic bottles have been recycled into REPREVE - improving air quality globally by avoiding 385 million kg of CO2 emissions* in the process. 

By making the choice to buy products made from sustainable fabrics, we can tread lightly on the planet while helping to close the loop on unnecessary waste - one piece of kit at a time. 

To find out more about ECONYL® and REPREVE, take a look at their websites.

#TreadLightly

 *Sources: econyl.com, water.org.uk and repreve.com