Industry waste is piling up in landfills and in ecosystems across the planet. Meet the outdoor initiatives, suppliers and brands repurposing these untapped resources for use in their products.

By now, many are already familiar with the issue of textile waste. Globally, collection of apparel at its end-of-life remains extremely limited, and only a tiny fraction of this is currently recycled. While there are promising developments, widespread textile-to-textile recycling likely remains several years into the future.

In the meantime, there are other waste streams in abundance that are currently much more cost-effective to repurpose. And by recycling these into new products, brands are finding that they can reduce both the environmental footprints of their own collections and the waste polluting our planet.

In this guide, we share the most promising fibers made using reclaimed waste that are already being used by top outdoor brands.

Reclaimed synthetic fibers

Polyester

Polyester remains a staple in outdoor textiles for its strength, moisture-wicking, and quick-drying properties. Recycled polyester, often sourced from PET bottles, has gained traction for reducing virgin fossil inputs. Suppliers like Repreve provide fibers found in collections from The North Face and Vaude. However, concerns about downcycling food-grade PET into textiles have driven demand for alternative sources.

Parley for the Oceans captures coastal plastic in 30-plus countries and transforms it into performance textiles via partners like PrimaLoft. Seaqual Initiative and Bionic Yarn use similar models, partnering with the fishing industry and coastal communities to reclaim plastic waste. These efforts support circularity by creating economic value for waste that might otherwise pollute marine ecosystems. Their success highlights the need for inputs beyond the bottle stream, especially as brands face pressure to design for recyclability and reduce reliance on single-use materials.

Nylon

Nylon’s high tensile strength and abrasion resistance make it a favorite for many technical outdoor applications, from climbing harnesses to rain shells. These qualities also have made its use widespread in other industries, and there are plenty of waste streams waiting to be reclaimed. Aquafil’s Econyl, found in outdoor performance brands like Garmont, turns recovered carpets, fabric scraps and other industrial waste into regenerated nylon, which its makers claim can be recycled infinitely.

Nylon’s strength also makes it popular in marine gear — particularly fishing nets — which sometimes end up as “ghost nets” that can cause immense destruction to marine wildlife as they drift in the ocean currents. Used fishing nets amount to a massive potential input stream for recycled nylon. NetPlus, developed by Bureo, sources end-of-life fishing nets from the coasts of South America and processes them into fully traceable, fully recycled fibers. Bureo’s NetPlus products represent 43% of Patagonia’s recycled nylon products as of Spring 2025.

The development of recycled nylon and polyester solutions signals a shift not just in sourcing but in how brands design for long-term material circularity. But as the outdoor industry scales its use of reclaimed synthetics, attention is also turning toward the recovery of natural fibers with comparable performance.

Reclaimed natural fibers

Down

Down offers exceptionally high warmth-to-weight performance and compressibility, making it indispensable in cold-weather outdoor garments and sleeping bags. Because down is also used in common items like duvets and pillows, it is relatively easy to recover and reuse at scale. Allied Feather & Down’s RENU program collects used down, cleans and sterilizes it, then tests it to meet the high fill-power standards of brands like Nemo. Re:Down follows a similar model, reclaiming feathers from discarded bedding and apparel to be used as fill in down jackets made by brands like Mammut.

With robust collection services and supply chains already in place, recycled down has become one of the most scalable reclaimed natural fibers in the outdoor industry today. This has enabled some major outdoor brands, like Rab, to build entire collections around recycled down and the material is increasingly used in mainstream performance gear. Besides repurposing waste, using recycled down also has the benefit of reducing demand on live-sourced down and helps lower the carbon footprint of insulated gear.

Wool

Wool is known for its high insulation, breathability, and odor control — qualities that make it useful for base layers, midlayers, and even outerwear. Recycled wool is already commonly reclaimed from pre-consumer offcuts and post-consumer garments. It is usually mechanically shredded and spun into new yarns or woven into fabrics. As such, wool is one of the few examples of successful textile-to-textile recycling found today, with Manteco being among the most well-known suppliers. Brands like Finisterre have turned to integrating this recycled wool into selected products, reducing their carbon footprints while preserving the performance qualities of the fiber.

Some wool never enters traditional textile supply chains, however. Lavalan sees this as a missed opportunity and recovers low-value wool from European sheep farms — which might otherwise be discarded or composted — and repurposes it into breathable, functional insulation. The result is a material that competes with synthetic insulations in outerwear and bedding, while making use of an agricultural byproduct. It is used by outdoor brands such as Fjällräven.

Both reclaimed and recycled wool offer a lower-impact alternative – helping to extend the life and value of an otherwise resource-intensive material.

Cotton

Popular for its softness, breathability, and moderate durability, cotton is the world’s most widely used natural fiber. But it is also water- and pesticide-intensive. Suppliers like Recover offer recycled cotton made from post-consumer textiles and pre-consumer factory scraps, which can significantly reduce cotton’s environmental impact. Patagonia is one leading brand that blends recovered cotton with recycled polyester to make new yarns for tees and sweatshirts.

One challenge that particularly affects cotton’s recyclability is the shortness of recovered fibers, which limits their use in high-performance fabrics. Innovators, like Infinited Fiber and Natural Fiber Welding, are developing solutions to regenerate and rebind these fibers into stronger yarns without synthetic additives. Another promising effort, Re&Up, focuses on extracting cotton from polycotton blends, one of the biggest hurdles in textile recycling. While these innovations show promise, many are still in their early development stage and whether they can scale to meet industry demand remains to be seen.

What’s next for reclaimed materials?

With vast quantities of existing waste ready to be recycled, and effective collection schemes already in place for many materials, reclaimed fibers offer a promising route to significantly reduce waste and other environmental impacts in the outdoor industry.

However, scalability remains a consistent barrier. Whether due to limited supply chains, fiber degradation, or the high costs, many closed-loop systems remain impractical at large scale. And while some solutions are showing progress toward commercial viability, others remain niche or too costly for widespread adoption.

Paradoxically, if waste reclaiming efforts become too successful, some of these recycling efforts will become obsolete in the not-so-distant future. But a cleaner planet sounds like just the kind of “problem” we need.