What recycled doesn't mean

The word recycled reassures. What it should really do is force you to be specific.

A lot of recycled material gets sold. Its limits rarely get explained. Let's do that.

Recycled polyester made from bottles is not circular: it pulls plastic out of a bottle-to-bottle loop to make a garment that, in turn, won't be recycled afterwards. And its fibres, shorter, shed more microfibres in the wash. That's no reason to ban it everywhere; it's a reason to keep it for pieces you rarely wash, and to say so.

Cotton, water repellent, the rest

Recycled cotton shortens the fibre: you blend it with virgin cotton so it holds, and the GRS label frames all of it. On the rain side, PFC-free water repellents, now required by regulation, repel water well but oil less well: you have to reactivate them more often. That's not a hidden flaw, it's care information.

Transparency as the difference

Our edge isn't saying we're recycled. It's telling the truth about recycled. Fewer pieces, better chosen, kept longer: that's the real ecology. The rest, a green label stuck on a throwaway product, we leave to the catalogue.