Trying to Make Clothing More Sustainable 

Aside from walking, you can’t beat cycling when it comes to environmentally-friendly modes of transport. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a car driving an average of 12,500 miles per year will expend 11,450 pounds of carbon dioxide, while transportation accounts for 33 percent of CO2 emissions in America.

And so if you’ve started cycling or have for many years due to these environmental concerns, you might be wondering what more you can do to lower your carbon footprint. This is where your kit can come into play and the materials that are used to make it.

Skintight lycra and spandex have been mainstays in cycling gear for decades now, as cyclists, pro and amateur, look to its aerodynamic properties to boost their marginal gains. As a petroleum-based polymer, it’s not a sustainable fabric though, and when blended with other fabrics it’s very difficult (and expensive) to recycle and reuse.

Another repeat offender commonly used in cycling, nylon, creates nitrous oxide during its production, a greenhouse gas 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It all adds up.

A report by the Changing Markets Foundation says that recycled plastics are where most of the fashion industry is moving to adopt a more sustainable image even though “such an approach only deals with the aftermath of the plastic pollution problem, and does very little to curtail the plastics crisis at the source.