sustainability

SUSTAINABILITY, REGENERATE, RECYCLE AND CIRCULARITY

These are words I keep reading in articles about what companies are doing so they are not polluting the world but keeping it tide clean.

They are using “end of life textiles being regenerated into new materials”. This is being done by one company Ambercycle, and I suspect there are others doing the same thing.

They are taking used products and breaking them down to the fibers originally used to make the products and are recycling it so we now have a circularity action. We no longer have to use new fiber to make our products. Amazing!!!

As I see it the companies who are selling their textile products are functioning on the basis of planned obsolescence. There products are so cheaply made using very cheap materials [I am presented these materials all the time] that the products wear out very quickly. They can be shirts, jackets, back

packs, shoes, no sleep sleeping bags, etc. textile products.

This gives companies like Ambercycle an endless supply of used textile products to recycle.

Over the years that the mills have moved to China and probably other Asian countries they have made cheaper and cheaper materials because their USA customers wanted lower costs for their merchandise, so, the mills accommodated them.

So, when you see a made in China label on a product you say it is cheap and you are right. However, the blame if you will, is not the Chinese factory who made the product but the American corporation who directed them what materials to use.

When I think back to the time, I entered into the textile industry I was selling my insulation to over two dozen children’s snowsuit manufacturers with factories all over the USA. There were about the same number of skiwear firms again from coast to coast. Today in just these two separate industries not one company that I know of exits. I do not know of any garment manufacturing of any sort that exists in the USA.

Retail stores that do exist are happy to get product into their stores regardless of quality.

The American companies that supply textile products to the stores are run by financial corporate executives at the manufacturing level [really importer] and retail stores. These people do not know about the products they are putting on the street so to speak, nor do they care, because their interest is the bottom line only.

Today all you see in the retailers are names like nike, northface, under armour, etc. and a few others that are all multibillion dollar corporations publicly traded. This is why the CFOs at these companies scrutinize their bottom lines.

So, they try to make a good impression for the public to see how they are doing something to “save” the planet. Who are the saving it for? Sustainability etc.

If they were to follow my lead and make products that will last for years, some of my sleeping bag customers have bags 35 years old still going strong. If taken care of no telling how long they will last. I imagine there are other companies producing high quality long lasting durable products in the USA.

I believe in SUSTAINABILITY!!!