We know, there’s no such thing as a stupid question. But there are some questions you might not want to ask your local shop or riding buddies. AASQ is our weekly series where we get to the bottom of your questions – serious or otherwise. Hit the link at the bottom of the post to submit your own question.
Welcome back to the Bikerumor Ask A Stupid Question series. This week, we’re addressing a poignant question by one of our readers: “Can Cycling Clothing ever really be Green?”. In order to answer this question in a constructive manner, we’ve broken it down into the following three questions:
- How is your brand working towards improving the sustainability of the cycling clothing line?
- What are the most environmentally friendly materials you use and why?
- What is the least environmentally friendly fabric you use and, what more environmentally friendly can it be replaced with in future?
This week we are joined by Rapha, Leatt and Troy Lee Designs, to find out how they are working to improve how “green” their cycling clothing is. Contributing are:
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Duncan Coulter, the Rapha Sustainability Manager
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Kris Kurowski, Marketing Manager at Leatt
- Craig “Stikman” Glaspell, the Global Bicycle Brand Director at Troy Lee Designs
How is your brand working towards improving the sustainability of the cycling clothing line?
Leatt: There is a short answer to this question, which is that the most sustainable path is to make good quality products that last for years of abuse. This is path Leatt has been on since the beginning and will continue to pursue.
The slightly longer and more complex answer, is that we are working step by step internally and externally to have a smaller environmental foot print. This is a long process which is constantly changing with new technology available.
All Leatt products from 2022 will come in biodegradable plastic free (and micro-plastic free) packaging. Also, many MTB garments will be made from sustainable fabrics made from recycled tree pulp in Austria as well as recycled coffee grounds.
Rapha: It is worth prefacing all of this with the caveat that ‘sustainability’ is a broad topic, covering both social and environmental issues, often in ways that are intimately connected. Given that these questions are explicitly referring to ‘green’ and materials (and for the sake of brevity) I’ll stick to environmental impacts, meaning greenhouse gas emissions, water, pollutants and waste. For those that want to know more, we’ve created an Impact & Sustainability page to share the full range of work we’re doing at Rapha, including updates on our Impact Commitments: 15 ambitious, measurable and public-facing targets that we are striving for in the coming years.
With that in mind, when it comes to the environmental impact of our clothing, we can break it down into three phases: product creation, product use and ‘end of life’.
In the product creation phase, we’re fortunate that the practice of Life Cycle Assessments, along with a body of research on climate change in the apparel sector, has been growing over the years. Because of this, we know that the bulk of our environmental footprint comes from the extraction of raw materials and the manufacturing of our fabrics. In light of this, we’ve been prioritizing our efforts in this area for the last two years.
