Friday, 29 March 2024
EnvironmentNews

Trek’s sustainability programme moves on to cycle clothing

Trek is to launch its first ever cycle clothing portfolio made entirely from sustainably sourced materials, furthering the pledges made in the firm’s much talked about Sustainability Report.

Putting to use fibres made from respun plastic bottles and pre-consumer textile waste, the catalogue is to span jerseys, shorts, and socks.

The overall aim of the tilt toward sustainability is to see the diversion of 40 tons of material from landfills annually with only the Spring/Summer cycle clothing collection. As a result of the changes, most new jerseys and shorts are made with materials that are OEKO-TEX Certified and Bluesign approved.

“Trek is dedicated to contributing to a greener future and we recognize the responsibility we hold to ensure that the goods we source, produce, and bring to market are created with our environmental footprint top of mind,” said Eric Bjorling, Trek Bicycle Director of Brand. “Every decision we make, from the supply chain to retail and how our gear ends up in customers’ homes is focused on a more sustainable future. We are proud of the innovation we’ve accomplished so far with the new apparel line but know there is more work to be done.”

Rightly so, Trek takes aim at the fashion industry, which is known to be the third most polluting industry after only the oil and gas sectors; it is in fact substantially ahead of even the agriculture and maritime shipping industries to the planet in damage terms. 87% of the total fiber input used to manufacture clothing worldwide ends up incinerated or disposed of in landfills.

Packaging

Of course the subject of trimming down unnecessary and non recyclable packaging is equally in focus and arguably an even quicker way to reduce a brand’s impact. Therefore Trek has made inroads here too switching their apparel packaging to be made of 100% recycled content.

As a result, Trek has eliminated nearly 400lbs of plastic laminate on jersey and short hangtags. They are also removing an additional chamois hangtag to save over 750lbs of paper. In eliminating any non-recycled content from their packaging, the brand has eliminated over 350,000 single use plastic bags.

On refunds a 30-day unconditional guarantee is to be offered on the products, which gives the consumer a satisfaction guarantee, or return with the sales receipt for a full refund or exchange.

The new cycle clothing collection includes a variety of men’s, women’s, and youth products, including:

  • Road Shorts: Velocis, Circuit, and Solstice road shorts are getting an upgrade with recycled nylon fibers made from textile waste. Each pair of shorts in the collection are specifically designed to maintain the product’s comfort and durability. In total, each pair of cycling shorts in the collection prevents on average 6.1 oz of textile waste from going to landfill, resulting in a total of 40 tons of textile waste saved.
  • Cycling Jerseys: The newest RSL, Circuit, and Solstice jerseys from Trek are made from recycled plastic water bottles. The plastic is converted into pellets that are then spun into a yarn, creating a recycled polyester fiber. In total, the collection of jerseys will save more than 1.9 million plastic water bottles from landfills with each jersey made recycling 12-28 plastic water bottles.
  • Socks: The Race socks will be available in three models: reflective, crew, and quarter. The socks feature a soft and compressive fabric made with COOLMAX EcoMade recycled polyester yarns. Strategically placed ventilation on the top and bottom of the foot bed, allows for proper breathing space.

The subject of sustainability reporting and indeed what registers as genuine versus ‘greenwashing’ was discussed at length in CyclingIndustry.News’ latest print edition. See page 36 for a deep dive with sustainability expert Dr Bernhard Issop.