Peak Performance has just revealed something that sounds like sci-fi for the outdoor industry: a fully circular performance jacket engineered to be unmade on purpose.
It’s called the Helium Loop Anorak, and it’s a radical rethink of how technical apparel should be built, and what should happen to it when your adventures finally wear it out.
Most outdoor gear ends up in landfill because it mixes down, nylon, elastic, zips, and stitching that can’t be separated again: once it’s made, that’s basically it.
But this jacket attempts something the industry has tried (and failed) to crack for years: true circularity without sacrificing performance.
A jacket built backwards
The Helium Loop Anorak is a multi-partner engineering project involving NetPlus, ALLIED Feather + Down, Pertex and Resortecs, each contributing a component that can be recovered at end-of-life.
The shell and liner use NetPlus yarn, made from fishing nets collected before they become ocean plastic, one of the biggest marine waste streams on the planet.
Pertex then turns these nets into a lightweight performance fabric. Inside, ALLIED supplies RDS-certified 850-fill-power goose down, which is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable.
But the real magic trick comes from Resortecs. The jacket is stitched together with Smart Stitch, a heat-dissolvable thread.
Under controlled conditions, the stitching melts away, allowing the down and nylon membrane to separate cleanly for industrial recycling.
As designer Marie Andersson puts it, “true circularity isn't about accepting compromises, it's about engineering garments to be unmade as thoughtfully as they're made.”
That design-first approach is exactly what ALLIED’s Matthew Betcher says brands have been missing. “Garments need to be designed for circularity before any sense of recyclability can even start to be possible.”
Fishing nets to freeride gear
For NetPlus and Bureo, the team behind the fishing-net recycling program, this project demonstrates a path away from fossil-fuel-based plastics altogether.
As CEO David Stover says, technical outerwear is still mostly made from crude oil, and this offers a “worthwhile challenge” and a way to “push forward on the industry transition away from fossil fuels.”
Peak Performance plans to expand circularity across its full range by 2030, and winning an ISPO Award for the Helium Loop Anorak suggests this may be more than a concept piece.
It’s a glimpse at what future outdoor jackets might look like: still warm, still technical, still adventure-ready, but built with their end in mind from day one.
Head over to Peak Performance for more info.
