Tons of outdoor gear and clothing come up every year in the market. But the interesting thing that is brewing in the market is the range of eco-friendly and sustainable products that are being sold. Products made from recycled fabrics, organic cotton, and hemp were being marketed and sold this year as well with increased hype. The industry is heading towards a more environment-friendly and sustainable outlook. And even though it’s a great initiative, there are some drawbacks to it as well. The major one is the process of recycling which puts huge pressure on the environment.

I came across this Portugal-based company called Truce Design which sells eco-friendly backpacks. They make their backpacks from upcycled materials like old sailcloth and drysuit fabric. I was fortunate enough to share a conversation with the founder of Truce Designs, Luke Mathers where he spoke about the true meaning of sustainability and the issues that come with using recycled plastic fabric.

 

Luke Mathers's take on recycling v/s upcycling

Through this article, I want to discuss and make everyone reading this aware of the differences between upcycling materials and recycled PET and other plastic materials that companies use to make new products.

Annually the apparel and accessory industry produces around 21 billion pounds of waste. What my company, Truce Designs does is take out the unused and reusable materials from the drysuit factories and buy excess fabric rolls from the warehouses. In this manner, we try to do our bit in conserving the environment by not using many virgin materials as we would use ideally. However, making buckles, zippers, and trim are difficult to source from upcycled materials.

To be honest, scaling a sustainable business like Truce’s is difficult to achieve without some compromises in standards.

The Recycling of Plastic into Yarn

Upcycled and recycled materials are completely different processes but may often come across as used interchangeably. We take the example of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) material which is made from plastic water bottles.

Process

By the time a plastic bottle reaches a recycling centre, it is usually sterilized, dried, and crushed into small chips. Then, it is heated through a spinneret machine that converts the material into yarn. This yarn is then wounded, crimped, baled, dyed, and knitted into a new fabric roll. After that, the fabric is dyed, coated, and given a nice finishing. While performing these last processes, a lot of toxic chemicals are released. To handle them properly, one needs to have certain standards and that’s when Bluesign®, etc, comes to help.

Impacts

Any process uses a lot of energy and human labour. However, recycling is any day better than using fresh petroleum products to make new polyester and nylon. The process involves a lot of time, water, energy, and labour and produces a lot of waste. It also exposes the labourers to hazardous conditions. Moreover, PET was not designed to be close to human skin and sweat as its fibres contain UV stabilizers and dioxins which have adverse effects on living organisms.

Upcycling of Fabrics

At our company, we use old sails that have been used for a long time on the water. The hardware is cut off from the sail and the pieces are washed with soap. Dry them and you can start making your backpack from this material.

However, there is still waste created by us. We are not always perfect and often discard materials that are doubtful to retain a good quality product. Moreover, as previously mentioned that it is difficult to source zippers, buckles, etc. from upcycled materials and hence, we have to get fresh pieces that are not very sustainable.