Last summer we announced our multi-year sales deal with sustainable apparel pioneers Patagonia – guaranteeing Patagonia access to our limited-supply Infinna™ fiber over the coming years.
Following this, Patagonia has launched an innovative Take-Back Program, repurposing old Patagonia tees into new ones using Infinna™. This scheme aims to tackle one of the key problems in the clothing industry – the take-make-waste model – which fails to take responsibility for what happens to clothing once someone no longer needs it. Without a solution in place, global textile waste is expected to increase 60 percent annually until 2030, when it’s estimated to hit 148 million tons per year.
With the Take-Back program, which launched in summer 2021 in the U.S. and has now expanded into Europe, Patagonia is promoting the recycling of their old cotton products while supporting recycling chains for apparel waste.
Once you no longer need your Patagonia tees you can bring them into your local Patagonia retail store, or post them (at your own cost) to the nearest store to you. To do this, you can use the Patagonia store locator to find the correct address, and be sure to mark your parcel “Tee-Cycle Take-Back Program”.
When the used tees are received, we then recycle them into our Infinna™ fiber, which becomes the basis of Patagonia’s first closed-loop products; the Tee-Cycle. The Tee-Cycle collection t-shirts are created using Infinna™ fiber made from both the Take-Back program alongside used cotton garments from Patagonia’s Global recycling channel.
We are thrilled to be pioneering this scheme to build a circular clothing system—one that prioritises a more efficient use of resources and upcycles waste into new clothing.
Dig Deeper
Learn more about our relationship with Patagonia.
Check out Infinited Fiber’s profile on Patagonia.
Get the lowdown on the Take Back Program.
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