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- Recycled Polyester
Recycled Polyester
Recycled Polyester
Our aim is to steadily increase the use of recycled materials in all our products and we continuously work to utilize more and more new fabrics containing recycled raw materials. This also applies for the so-called trims, which includes buttons, zippers, labels or cords.
Polyester normally uses fossil resources for its production. By re-using existing material streams we can save fossil resources and reduce the energy demand as well as climate emissions.
We currently use different types of recycled polyester fabrics in products such as T-shirts, fleece and softshell garments, as well as shell garments.
We know from studies we have conducted on our products together with an independent environmental consultancy that the use of recycled polyester can significantly lower the environmental and climate impact of products compared to using new materials.
Here are two examples:
- Softshell pants containing 74% recycled polyester have a 65% lower environmental impact than pants made from new polyester.
- A T-shirt made from 85% recycled polyester derived from recycled plastic bottles has a 77% lower environmental impact than a T-shirt made from organic cotton.
The most common raw material for the production of recycled polyester are used PET plastic bottles (so-called post-consumer material) and to some extent also waste material from textile production (so-called pre-consumer material).
The reason why mainly PET bottles are used is due to their availability and their purity in terms of material type. No other waste stream offers that big volume of basically the same identical raw material without any impurities from other material inputs. On the other hand we can also reduce plastic waste as these material streams are being utilized again.
The need for pure and clean raw material streams is also the reason why textiles itself most often are not recycled at the end of its life – yet. Too many different material inputs and a composition of different fiber and material types makes recycling difficult. This is one of the biggest challenges for textile industry in the future: To ensure that garments can be recycled to new textile fibers and that the loop for a real circular flow of textiles is closed.