Apparel player North Face teams up with National Geographic

The American apparel brand North Face, who have partnered with National Geographic (Nat Geo) to produce a limited edition ‘bottled at source’ T-shirt.

The T-shirts are created out of plastic bottles collected from the waste streams in national parks such as Yosemite and the Great Smoky Mountains. More than 160,000 pounds of plastic bottles were collected from the parks and transformed into the T-shirts, which are branded with, “THIS T-SHIRT WAS TRASH.” Interestingly, for people who may not know, the shirts worn by the Indian cricket team are also made of recycled plastic. It should be interesting to see if that is the case for teams playing at the ongoing football world cup in Russia too. Elsewhere, the bottles have been used to make everything including blankets too, showing how if there is a will, there is a way in this case.

Moreover, North Face is now joining forces with The Renewal Project to produce a collection of upcycled clothing they’re calling The North Face Renewed. Rather than throwing away defective or returned garments, they will repair and restore items to sell at a discount.  Rather than contribute to this wastage, North Face coats, shirts, pants and various other items will be refurbished and on sale for anywhere from $26 to upwards of $100 through September as part of the North Face Renewed pilot phase.

This move comes in line with the growing awareness of consumers. Today, more and more companies are joining the circular fashion movement, which focus on recycling and sourcing environmentally friendly materials.

Fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world, and most of the clothes discarded are thrown into a landfill or are incinerated, hence moves like the one above are important for a more sustainable future. More and more big brands and fast fashion labels should start mass-producing upcycled products for a better tomorrow.

You can read about fashion being the second largest polluter by clicking here.