Polyester
85% of Patagonia鈥檚 polyester this season is recycled. Using recycled polyester, rather than virgin petroleum polyester, reduced our seasonal carbon emissions by over 5,600 metric tons of CO鈧俥.
Photo: Tim Davis
Polyester isn鈥檛 made from a single material. It鈥檚 actually a polymer made from carbon molecules that can be manipulated in various ways depending on the intended use. Polyester can be made from sugar or from petroleum. It can be recycled if the waste stream that it鈥檚 coming from is homogenous and free of impurities, like food scraps or dirt. It can be used to create insulation for clothing or for buildings. And, when blended with natural fibers, it can yield stronger, more water and abrasion-鈥嬧赌�resistant fabrics. Everything from jackets to bags to canoes to the finish on pianos is made from聽polyester.
欧博会员入口 use recycled polyester in 80 percent of our products, a process that started in 1993 when we created the outdoor industry鈥檚 first fleece from recycled plastic soda bottles. Then we converted the face fabrics in all of our shells to recycled materials. Now all of our Capilene庐 and synthetic insulation styles are made with some percentage of recycled material. 欧博会员入口 use it a lot, and we鈥檙e continually looking for ways to improve the way it performs. One of the places where we鈥檝e done the greatest amount of experimenting is with polyester聽insulation.
The origins of polyester insulation can be traced back to the early 1980s, when the US Army Research Laboratory was looking for a material that could compensate for the drawbacks of down, which was used in sleeping bags and outerwear at the time. To this day, down remains the most packable, comfortable and lofty insulation available, but it doesn鈥檛 keep you warm when it鈥檚 wet or withstand prolonged exposure to bad weather. The material that was eventually created for the US Army was a nonwoven polyester called PrimaLoft庐 ONE, which was made available to the general public in聽1990.
Since then, everyone, including us, has worked on ways of manipulating polyester to adjust its properties for synthetic insulation. Unlike down or wool, polyester can be altered at the chemical level to achieve various structures depending on what the insulation is eventually intended to do. For instance, if you鈥檙e moving around a lot in cold weather and also sweating, you need a jacket that鈥檚 lightweight, breathable and stretchy like the Thermal Airshed (87% recycled polyester shell with 100% recycled insulation). If you鈥檙e going to be outside for days on end in variable and frigid weather, you鈥檒l want one of our DAS庐 styles (100% nylon shell with 75% recycled polyester insulation), which are now lighter weight and more compressible while being the warmest synthetic insulation we make.
As of now, synthetic insulations are reasonably well-rounded; but so far, none of them have achieved that cozy downlike feeling. The one that comes closest is PlumaFill. To develop this insulation, we partnered with a materials supplier to create polyester fibers that mimic the structure of down while keeping the warm-when-wet properties of synthetic. It鈥檚 managed to fool a few testers, but we鈥檙e still working on the perfect substitute for聽down.
