Our new alternative: recycled fabrics

The textile industry must become eco-friendlier.

In fact, 4 million tons of clothes are thrown away a year in Europe. And only 1 third is recycled.

 

OUR ACTIONS

We chose to use recycled and recyclable textiles as much as we can, in order to be more ecological.

Here are our requirements when we select a fabric:

• Health respect (polyester is not only bad for oceans but for your skin too!)
• Carbon footprint during the fabric making
• Also, its ecological impact during the product’s use
• Respect of employees (working with “clean” materials and not breathing toxic fumes)
• Respect of working conditions
• Its “second life”, the product’s future.

To be sure that all these requirements are respected, some really brilliant people got the idea of creating certification labels and controls (and this is very convenient for us!).

Recycled and recyclable fabrics 

For our 2 men shorts (the Hunter and the Knight that you like so much), we chose recycled and recyclable fabrics, made of ECONYL®.

What is ECONYL®?

It’s a recycled and recyclable nylon, which comes from waste such as fabric leftovers, plastic garbage found in fishing nets…

 To give you a precise example:

• We gather waste, such as plastic bottles found in oceans;
• We treat them, crush them and melt them to thread them;
• We now have ECONYL®!

From this thread, we create a fabric and then a garment. If the garment is made out of 100% ECONYL fibers, then it is recyclable when it’s at its life end.

It helps cleaning the oceans while maintaining the resistance and elasticity of ordinary nylon. By choosing it, you allow a 80% greenhouse gases saving, and that’s not debatable!

Our ECONYL® clothes are also certified by OEKO-TEX.

When we can’t use synthetic fibers (which is more useful in sports), we made the choice to only use recycled polyester, instead of ordinary polyester. By using this recycled fabric, we don’t participate in creating ordinary polyester (which uses natural resources as petrol), garbage and pollution.

According to the WRAP, this recycled fabric allows a reduction of 32% of CO2 emission compared to ordinary polyester.

Be careful! It’s not a miracle, those textiles have limits: if they’re used with another material, it’s more difficult to recycle them.

Some fabrics can also free micro-plastic particles during your clothes washing. It means that small plastic particles come off your clothes and go into our oceans by pipes. That’s why we are really careful about the fibers, dyes and treatments we’re using.

To overcome this, there are solutions as specific washing bags.

Ecological textiles

We also use Lyocell, an eco-friendly material.

In fact, it comes from eucalyptus, a tree that does not need much water and much space, unlike cotton, which needs lots of water to produce 1kg (between 5 000 and 17 000 liters). On top of that, this plant is very strong, so producers don’t need to use pesticides or insecticides to cultivate it. 
To sum up, we are always trying to outperform to propose qualitative products (and not quantitative anymore). Our sport spirit gets the upper hand.
 
If you have suggestions or questions, do not hesitate to send them to us!