From our first business plan, Ecomadix has committed to exclusively sell products made from recycled or biodegradable material that can be further recycled at the end of their usable life. We base our product decisions around equity and transparency around environmental and economic impact to our planet.
Ecomadix focuses and runs on 6 pillars:
- All products are made from recycled and/or biodegradable materials.
- All our products can be recycled again at the end of their lives.
- We will have a Circularity Buy Back Program where we will recycle the customers' returned Ecomadix apparel goods.
- All our tags and packaging will be compostable/biodegradable.
- We will be giving back to your communities.
- We will continuously educate ourselves and work to improve as individuals and a company for our communities and our planet.
The vision of Ecomadix is to become as efficient as possible, working towards having the company’s localized factories tackling the waste problem to consumer goods, ultimately helping bring in a new normal where waste is seen as a design flaw.
What materials do you use in production? What do TPU and RPET mean?
Great questions! We’ve loved learning about this - TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) is a mix between rubber and plastic, it is flexible, durable, and smooth. It has fantastic material properties that are advantages such as being biodegradable (will start to break down after 3 to 5 years in soil and the right conditions), and nontoxic. Biodegradable TPU is also fully recyclable and a better alternative to the toxicity of PVC.
RPET stands for Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate. It is polyester synthetic fabric made by taking washed plastic bottles and jars and breaking them into plastic pellets. From there they are melted down and spun into yarn that is made into fabric.
Sustainability advantage of RPET material is that the manufacturing process requires 90% less water and 60% less CO2 emissions than virgin polyester fabric. Compared to other environmentally friendly fabric such as organic cotton, RPET has some advantages such as having 50% lower carbon footprint. Polyester requires less energy to manufacture than Nylon and releases less greenhouse gas emissions during the process.
We're also using a few new fabrics that are made using extremely innovative production processes! Our joggers are made out of TopGreen rTEX Recycled Polyester. This genius process has created the world's first circular polyester, created by processing textile waste streams and separating out any fiber contaminants without the use of toxic solvents. This process closes the loop of current PET recycling, diverting what previously would have been considered waste into new, luxuriously soft recycled fabrics.
As for the fabric dying process, our Luxe Recycled Fabric Collection uses a special ChitoSanté treatment, which further turns trash into treasure. Used and discarded Chitin (a shellfish-based byproduct of the food industry) is broken down and combined with recycled textile fabrics during the finishing process, resulting in the beautiful coloured fabrics you see, while adding a number of incredible benefits to the materials themselves in the process. The result is a recycled fabric that is anti-bacterial, odour-resistant, moisture-wicking, and rated UPF50 for sun protection.
What’s a Circularity Buy Back Program?
The Ecomadix team is currently in talks with factories across Canada and specifically in Vancouver that are willing to work with the company on textile recycling of the returned goods into a secondary product line or use it for other in demand items like insulation filling etc. We’re excited about the piece of mind that none of us are adding to the global waste problem that is “fast fashion”. More info coming soon!
Contact Us!
We’re not perfect, and we’ve got a lot to keep learning about this space. We can’t wait to update you on each advancement, experiment, mistake, and learnings as we grow this business!
Thoughts on what we could be doing better or what we could prioritize next? Let us know at crew@ecomadix.com.
