Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Worn-Out Capilene
Patagonia’s new Capilene recycling program sets the standard for how business should be done. We just received the recycling bins at our Tunnel Road store and put them out on the floor.
If you drop off some old Capilene, you get a cool sticker that says “I changed my underwear for good.” You also get that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with recycling. Plus, for every piece of Capilene we send back, Patagonia will donate some money to a local non-profit of our choice.
The bins are cardboard boxes that convert into shipping containers when they become full. But that’s not the cleverest thing about Common Threads Garment Recycling, as Patagonia has named the program.
The program uses the ECOCIRCLE fiber-to-fiber recycling system from a large Southeast Asian company called Teijin. This company resembles America’s DuPont, only Teijin seems to have more of an environmental conscience.
They chop the old clothes into pieces – zippers and all. The metal pieces get filtered out by a giant magnet. The fiber gets broken down into raw polyester, which can then be spun into new fiber again.
It’s an awesome idea, completely in line with the “Cradle to Cradle” philosophy introduced by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Study after study has shown that recycling ultimately uses fewer resources than production from scratch. When products go from cradle to cradle, they are recycled and used again, thus reducing (or eliminating) waste and pollution, and decreasing the need to extract natural resources from the Earth.
Patagonia actually studied the impacts they would have if they used virgin polyester versus recycled polyester, measuring the amount of CO2 emissions per ton of DMT, the raw material in polyester. Carbon dioxide is one of the main culprits of global warming.
In their report, they found that using virgin polyester would result in total CO2 emissions of 4.18 metric tons, while using recycled Capilene would result in total emissions of 1.2 metric tons.
As someone who prefers wooded mountains to strip mines, clear mountain views to air pollution, etc., I vote for the cradle to cradle idea.
