Our Materials
Nylon is the commercial name for polyamide. It is a durable and stretchy material, which makes it ideal for sports wear or other technical garments. It is a synthetic fiber, meaning it is made from chemicals derived from fossil fuels, and will pollute the environment for years if not discarded properly.
Recycled nylon can be made from both post-consumer and pre-consumer waste. Post-consumer waste would be discarded nylon-based products, such as fishing nets, carpets, tights, and plastic scraps. When made from pre-consumer waste, it refers to fabric or yarn waste from the textile mills. For example, when a spinning mill makes nylon yarn from the fiber, there is always a loss of yarn in the process that cannot be used. Instead of being discarded, this yarn can be remelted and re-spun into new yarn, in other words, recycled.
Top benefits of recycled nylon
The main advantage of recycled synthetic fibers is that it not directly reliant on fossil fuels. The nylon is made of waste, thus skipping the raw material extraction and transformation stages, and all the energy consumption that that would entail.
Additionally, the industry knows how to make recycled nylon from different types of waste. It can be made using nylon products from landfills, the ocean, or local factories. Which means that a lot of waste can be saved from polluting the environment or being discarded.
Nylon is considered more durable than polyester because it is a stronger fiber, therefore, it is easier to recycle nylon fabric into new fabric. The infrastructure for collecting and recycling garments isn't here yet, but when recycling is possible, nylon is preferable.
Recycled nylon is, as mentioned above, made from discarded nylon-based products. You break the products down into their individual chemical components, which later can be recombined into “new” nylon sheets. The nylon sheets are then heated up and fed into a spinneret, where they form fibers. The fibers are then woven together into a fabric material.
Not a perfect solution
The manufacturing process is still resource-intensive, all nylon-based products must be cleaned before the recycling process, which is an extra step requiring water and energy.
Nylon is neither cheap nor easy to recycle, which is probably why companies prefer the virgin kind. Disposing of nylon-based products properly is an expense that many overlook, for example, it’s way cheaper for fishermen to throw their nylon fishing nets in the ocean instead of carrying them back to shore to be recycled. Additionally, like all synthetic fibers, recycled nylon still shads microplastic when being used or washed.
Ideally, all nylon waste could be recovered and recycled before it is discarded into nature. Research to create bio-based nylon is ongoing to reduce the production of 100% fossil-based fibers. For now, these alternatives are rare and expensive. That is why we use recycled nylon.
