Following the immense support of our Sustainability Promise initiatives, we have continued to search for new ways to reduce our impact on the environment. One issue that we want to help solve is the amount of rubbish that is polluting our waterways, forests, beaches, and landfills. We eliminated the plastic wrapping our gear and replaced it with a biodegradable card wrap, however, we wanted to take it a step further.
And we have!
For the 2019/20 hunting range and beyond, we are thrilled to be partnering with Unifi® and REPREVE®, the worlds leading recycled fiber manufacturer, to make our technical hunting fabrics out of recycled plastic bottles. We’re ecstatic to be the first hunting company in the world to use REPREVE® recycled fibers and help them recycle over 20 billion plastic bottles by the end of 2020.
Step 1: Used plastic bottles are collected and cleaned.
Step 2: The clean bottles are shredded and melted into plastic chips.
Step 3: The chips enter a state of the art extrusion and texturing process and transformed into fibers.
Step 4: The fibers are knitted or woven to create the fabrics that make our high-performance hunting gear.
This means gear like our jackets and trousers will be directly reducing the amount of plastic rubbish that is polluting our environment, at approximately 50 bottles per jacket/trouser.
Another benefit is that we’re conserving resources by finding a new life for used products. Compared to creating virgin fiber, making our recycled fabrics offsets using new petroleum, emitting fewer greenhouse gases and conserving water and energy in the process.
Once our gear has loyally served you and your hunting adventures for years and has finally done its dash, the material can be stripped apart and turned back into the new fiber to create a whole new product.
NO! Not in the slightest. Once the bottles have been cleaned and processed, the actual fabric fiber itself is constructed using the same process. There is no difference in performance or feel.
