Winter, as they say, is coming. If you’re looking for a puffer jacket to keep yourself warm with a lighter impact on the environment, the team at Kathmandu has been working hard. The New Zealand-founded, certified B-Corp outdoor wear company recently launched its NXT-Level BioDown jacket, an innovative and award-winning piece of clothing made from a highly durable, biodegradable nylon.
While most jackets are made from polyester, Kathmandu chose nylon for its greater durability. It also decided to opt for nylon 66 (commonly used in friction bearings, carpets and luggage), a stronger version of its close cousin, nylon 6 (think toothbrush bristles) so that it will last – and be worn – longer.
Kathmandu’s scientists tweaked the polymer with a new ingredient designed to trigger biodegradation in an oxygen-free landfill environment. In a nutshell, the ingredient makes the discarded jacket attract microbes that form a biofilm on the material to help them break down those long chains of polymers. (But don’t worry, your jacket won’t start falling apart in the wash or while you’re walking the dog in the rain – only when it reaches oxygen-free landfill.*)
Hang on, isn’t nylon derived from fossil fuel? Well, yes. Kathmandu’s Californian-born general manager of product, Robert Fry, says the decision to use nylon is all about playing the long game: producing a high-quality garment that will last longer, be more recyclable when technology catches up, and, in the meantime, biodegrade in three to five years under the right conditions.*
“For us, the long-term goals around sustainability have to do with circularity more than anything else,” Fry says from the company’s Christchurch headquarters. “And there are lots of principles of circularity, all of which we’re heavily invested in supporting, exploring, developing and innovating around, and they’re all in various states of go.”
The problem Kathmandu faces is that much of the infrastructure required to close those circular systems isn’t widely available in Australia yet. For example, we are still a long way away from widespread textile-to-textile chemical recycling, and the types of anaerobic, or oxygen-free, landfills required to make BioDown’s innovative material biodegrade effectively are sparse.
The hope is that demand will ignite supply. “We’re doing our part to energise that infrastructure, so that as we introduce new products, new concepts into the marketplace, that there’s an infrastructure in place that we can partner with, plug into and collaborate with,” Fry says.
So, after you’ve worn your jacket for years, how does the breakdown of the material eventually happen?
Manu Rastogi, who heads Kathmandu’s innovation team and worked closely on the BioDown design, says: “Biodegradation happens at the molecular level. Nylon 66 is made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Microbes break down those molecular chains, whether that happens over hundreds of years or a few years, as in the case of BioDown. As the nylon is consumed by microbes, they release carbon dioxide and methane, and all that remains at the end is basically microbial poop.”
Rastogi and his team went in search of best-practice landfills and found more than 20 biologically active sites in New Zealand. Although there are bioreactor landfills in Australia, our size and system of state governments means they’re not well documented, Rastogi says. There’s room for improvement.
Each state and territory also manages and prioritises waste differently. In suburban Sydney, roughly 40% of waste goes to Veolia’s Woodlawn Eco Precinct, an innovative, modern landfill facility that includes the necessary bioreactor landfill.
“And if you look at what’s happening globally,” Rastogi says, “that’s where the landfill design and engineering is going: towards ‘how do we harness carbon dioxide and methane and use that energy to generate electricity, so it doesn’t go out in the atmosphere as greenhouse gases?’”
Adopting the “build it and they will come” philosophy, Rastogi’s team designed the jacket to be as recyclable as possible, too, making the zippers and inner lining from the same material. Insulating the jacket are duck down and feathers certified to the Responsible Down Standard, the global standard for ensuring best practices in animal welfare throughout the retail supply chain. And, by scanning in a QR code on the product, customers can trace the key conditions and source of the down in their jacket through the website Track My Down.
Other biodegradable, environmentally friendly details include labels made of cotton, hang tags made out of paper instead of plastic, and using natural bentonite clay instead of silica gel to absorb moisture during shipping.
In an imperfect world, it’s still vital for consumers and manufacturers to play their role and keep striving for a circular economy.
Fry says: “We have to be responsible citizens of the planet and of our respective nations. It’s morally incumbent upon us to do our best to make the world a better place. As Manu likes to say, ‘we want to get from a place of doing less bad to doing more good’.”
Granted, the fully circular economy may be a while off yet, but it’s encouraging to see at least one company designing end-of-life responsibilities into its products from the very beginning.
Check out Kathmandu’s new NXT-Level BioDown jacket.
*Testing under ASTM D5511 indicates biodegradation of 86.6% after 3 years could occur in optimal conditions in some biologically active landfills without oxygen. Please ask your local council if this type of collection or waste disposal facilities exist for the product.
