When Patagonia finalized its Common Threads Garment Recycling Program in fall 2005, is set out to make all its products recyclable by late 2010. With one and half years until it reaches that deadline, Patagonia has compiled a lengthy look at the Common Threads program.

In short, the company has learned a whole lot about what it takes to make clothing and other outdoor gear recyclable, but it’s unlikely Patagonia’s entire catalog will be recyclable by fall 2010. However, it just might make all its apparel recyclable by then.

The Common Threads program collects only certain Patagonia products or types of clothing; the company takes back only what it knows it can recycle.

It All Started With Underwear

The first product collected and recycled through Common Threads was Patagonia’s polyester-spandex Capilene underwear, chosen because underwear is simple, has no buttons or zippers and isn’t typically handed down.

Teijin, a Japanese textile company, developed a garment-to-garment recycling process for the underwear, and Patagonia found out that using Capilene underwear as a raw material instead of petroleum uses 76 percent less energy and emits 42 percent less carbon dioxide.

The Common Threads program grew in spring 2007 when other Capilene apparel was included, along with 100 percent cotton T-shirts, Patagonia fleece and Polartec fleece jackets from any clothing brand. A year later Patagonia started labeling clothes that were accepted through Common Threads with instructions on what to do with them at the end of their lives. The collection program also expanded to include some board shorts, polyester jackets and nylon items, and later that year Patagonia unveiled the first recyclable nylon waterproof and breathable shell. Around that time Patagonia also started working with another company, Toray, which developed a recycling program for items made of nylon 6.

Results, Tempered by Challenges

Since the start of Common Threads, Patagonia has recycled more than 13,200 pounds of garments, and collected much more. But that is still nowhere close to the amount of items Patagonia sells or that get tossed in the trash.

The amount of recyclable items in Patagonia’s spring collection has gone from 28 percent last year to 38 percent this year. And for it’s fall collection, the amount is expected to increase from 45 percent last year to 65 percent this fall. Patagonia is not confident, though, that it will increase both of those to 100 percent by fall 2010. But it has a much better chance to make all of its apparel recyclable, since 80 percent of the clothing in its fall 2009 collection will be recyclable.

Along the way, Patagonia faced a host of challenges. Some of the recyclers it works with use chemical recycling, which dissolves products into chemicals. Another uses mechanical recycling, which physically, not chemically, rips apart fabric and spins it into yarn.

While chemical recycling systems can be easily tainted if too many different materials are combined, mechanical recycling can take a greater variety of inputs, but that also limits the variety of products Patagonia can make with the resulting fiber. Patagonia’s products are expected to meet certain performance levels, and any alternation to the amount of certain fabrics in them can affect that.

Patagonia is also reaching the limit of how much material it can handle. The amount of items they collect now is about what they are able to recycle. Increasing the amount of recycled materials would force its recycling systems to expand, which would require capital investment, more employees and more expenses for shipping garments overseas.

And some of the garments it receives are so old or worn out, with missing tags or faded labels, that it takes some serious investigating to find out what material they’re made of. But that only means that a piece of clothing has lived a long, useful life. Patagonia sees Common Threads as a last resort for clothing, and will even donate to non-profits usable clothing that customers return through Common Threads.

“If, after a lifetime of use, a garment can be reused or handed-down no more, we provide Common Threads as a final destination, so that worn, used, and abused products can be recycled and made into new garments,” Patagonia says in the report on Common Threads.

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Source:  Greenbiz.com

According to Trendwatching.com, “while financial woes may hold back some green initiatives, the future has never looked greener.”

Mainly because creating a more sustainable economy is not an option, but a necessity. And we all know that necessity is the mother of invention. Which is why this month, amidst crumbling banks, G20 meetings and stimulus plans, we highlight 12 eco sub-trends that any marketer or entrepreneur can act on today.

Trendwatching refers to these opportunities as an eco-bounty, and they provide the following definition: “ECO-BOUNTY refers to the numerous opportunities, both short and long term, for brands that participate in the epic quest for a sustainable society. Some of these opportunities exist despite the current recession, others are fueled by it, not in the least because of new rules and regulations. Downturn-obsessed brands who lose their eco-focus will find themselves left out in the cold when the global economy starts recovering.”

They break up their trends into 12 categories, ranging from Eco-Frugal to Eco-Naked. Here are a few items from throughout the list that stood out to me:

• Green building solutions retailer Green Depot has recently opened a flagship store in Manhattan that is designed to demonstrate the high-performance eco building materials in action. A light booth made of recycled resin materials, for example, helps shoppers compare light bulbs and paint colors in a controlled setting, while the Zero-VOC Paint Bar serves up a line of paints free of volatile organic chemicals. See also Natural Interiors and Eco-Logisch.
• Dutch creative agency Spranq has developed a new font called Ecofont that’s specifically designed to extend the life of ink cartridges and toner by using 20 percent less ink than traditional fonts. The free, downloadable font is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, and works best at a 9- or 10-point size.
• Bixi is a high-tech public bike system in Montreal (even more sophisticated than Paris’ Velib service) to be launched this spring, using bikes equipped with RFID tags that allow users to track availability online via real-time information beamed to the web from the system’s solar-powered bike stands. Users will pay a membership fee of CDN 78 for one year, CDN 24 for one month or CDN 5 for one day, with the first half hour of every trip provided free of charge.
• Crop to Cup is a fair trade coffee brand with a twist. In addition to buying coffee directly from farmers, representing them in markets and reinvesting in their livelihood, the brand also allows customers to trace their cup of coffee back to the farmer that produced it. Which in turn allows them to learn about the origins of the coffee and engage in a dialogue about the product.
• Philadelphia-based RecycleBank enables households to earn RecycleBank Dollars, redeemable for discount coupons at Whole Foods, RiteAid, Starbucks and participating local companies just by leaving their recyclables out to be collected. RecycleBank containers are embedded with identifying barcodes which collection trucks scan to track how much each household is recycling; the more customers recycle, the more they earn in RecycleBank dollars—up to the equivalent of USD 35 per month. (available in parts of Omaha)
• Luscious Garage is the first woman-owned and operated autoshop in San Francisco dedicated to servicing hybrids with a specialty in converting them to all-electrical plug-ins. Since opening in 2007 this unorthodox auto garage has attracted customers seeking a more friendly car repair experience with the garage’s laid back décor featuring plants and books. So far, the vast majority of customers have been Prius owners, but Luscious Garage is planning to diversify beyond hybrids in order to increase the company’s customer base. Which goes to show that ECO-FEEDER businesses may never be the next HUGE thing but they’re sure fun to start up if you’re the niche/long-tail entrepreneurial type.
• Welsh clothing brand Howies offers a line of super-durable clothing called Howies’ Hand-Me-Down that features jackets, backpacks and messenger bags designed specifically to last for 10 or more years. The company crafts its products painstakingly and uses high-quality components like organic tweed and ventile—an extremely tightly woven cotton fabric that is inherently water-resistant and uses 30 percent more yarn than conventional fabrics.
• And from the map gurus themselves: Google Maps Transit Layer, which is available for over 50 cities worldwide, overlays public transport lines onto the main map view, allowing the user to easily plan a green(er) journey to their destination.

Among the early-adopter segment of eco-conscious consumers, The Intelligence Group has observed a new trend called “precycling” and believes it will grow.

Consumers who precycle aren’t just content with throwing cans and bottles in the recycle bin and letting waste management sort it out. With increasing consumer interest in sustainable living, those engaged in precycling aim to avoid products that create more superfluous stuff. This could mean everything from buying bulk in order to avoid excess packaging to reusing everything from water bottles to shopping bags (the latter of which has caught on with retailers and the public at large).

In its May Cassandra Report, The Intelligence Group found that 45% of trendsetters and 14% of mainstream consumers have “cut down on bottled water purchases” in the past six months, while 49% and 16% respectively have “cut down on use of plastic bags” during the same period.

Precycling evolved out of a trend the market research and consulting firm spotted in 2007, which it called “wasted.” This is when it noticed excess was emerging as a dirty word. People were looking for ways to pare down packaging and/or repurpose it, for starters. As examples, think Pom Wonderful’s reusable bottles and Chaco footwear’s program that offers customers a 20% discount when they send in used but clean shoes, which are donated to developing countries.

It is becoming a more popular viewpoint that recycling cans, bottles, paper and such is an antiquated misuse of energy, so precyclers remove themselves from junk mail lists, read paper-based media online and even carry around “precycling kits” consisting of cloth napkins and silverware—anything to reduce waste and not contribute to the recycling bin.

“It’s not just about how you dispose of [products and packaging] anymore,”  said Melissa Lavigne, director of marketing for The Intelligence Group, which is a division of CAA. “It’s about being conscious about products you buy in the first place. That’s the idea behind precycling.”

Of course, precycling isn’t replacing recycling completely, especially in its more abstract forms. Consumers are all for donating or reselling their electronic gadgets, for instance, thanks to eBay and other Web resources. Lavigne said, “We asked people how many think of the resale value when they purchase a product, and 49% said they do.”

Source: Brandweek

A newly FSC certified company in the United States is recycling old raft logs - so called boomsticks – into a host of fine lumber products. The company expects to sell much of its product line to developers and builders involved in the environmentally sensitive U.S. construction industry.

Columbia Riverwood received FSC chain of custody certification in April 2008. The company’s FSC recycled products will maximize building material points under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program.

The Oregon based company acquired over 1 million board feet of floating boomsticks. Over 50 years ago, boomsticks were selected from some of the highest quality logs in order to tow huge log rafts up and down powerful rivers. For decades the river has been covering all but the tops of these logs, preserving the wood.

Each boomstick is lifted out of the river, loaded onto a log truck and transported to an FSC certified sawmill in Mehama, Oregon. Years of accumulated grit in the outer inch of each log requires the use of a large circular saw blade. Once that outer grit layer is removed, the beauty of old growth timber is reclaimed into flooring, window and door stock, beams, molding and one-of-a-kind blocks for woodturners.

“Based on diameter and ring count, our boomsticks range in age from 150 to 350 years old and stood over 200 feet tall before being felled 50 to 70 years ago. Some of the ring counts (more that 30 to the inch) simply can’t be found on the market today,” said Erick Haglund, Columbia Riverwood’s president. “It’s a real thrill to generate an old growth product through recycling.”

Currently, the US recycles only 52% of the aluminum cans being used in the country. Compare this to the global average of 63%, or global leaders like Brazil (94%) or Japan (90%). The US is the world’s biggest consumer of aluminum cans, and we should all be aware of the environmental benefits of recycling them.

According to Greg Wittbecker, Director of Corporate Metal Recycling for Alcoa, the US should appreciate the environmental gains of simply increasing the nation’s recycling rate to 75%. “If we could recover and recycle 75% of the aluminum cans being currently tossed into landfills — 600,000 metric tons of aluminum — we could save 1286 megawatts of generated electricity. That’s the amount produced by two coal fired power plants, and consumed by two aluminum plants,” says Greg. “Replacing this production with recycling would keep 11.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from being generated and released into the atmosphere.” It would also reduce the amount of mercury going into the environment, since power plants emit polluting mercury when they burn coal.”

Recycling aluminum saves enormous quantities of energy, otherwise required to make virgin aluminum. Recycling a ton of aluminum uses just 5% of the energy required to make virgin metal. Every ton of recycled aluminum saves about 14,000 kilowatt hours of electricity.

In Omaha, our single stream curbside recycling program makes it easy to recycle aluminum at home. If your company doesn’t currently offer single stream recycling, then have your facilities manager contact Omaha’s FirstStar Fiber right away.

Do you need some help convincing your friends and coworkers to recycle. Take a look at this list, it will give you that hook to get them interested in learning more.

1. Paper products make up 40% of all trash.
2. The highest point in Ohio is a literally a garbage dump that is now called Mount Rumpke.
3. 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatts of energy and 7,0001 ton of paper! gallons of water can be saved by recycling.
4. Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
5. Recycled plastic is can be made into polyester carpets, plastic lumber, clothing, flower pots, insulation for sleeping bags & ski jackets, car bumpers and other products.
6. Each American uses about 400 aluminum cans a year. If aluminum is recycled, 95% less energy is used than if it were made from scratch.
7. 75% of our trash can be recycled.
8. Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.
9. Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups each year.
10. About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material.