We’re excited to share that Recover and partner Intradeco recently earned a Control Union Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) Certification for our processes and manufacturing of sustainable apparel from 100% recycled materials!
“Recover Brands has been making 100% recycled apparel since 2010 and this LCA certification further validates our ongoing commitment to sustainability,” Bill Johnston, president of Recover, said. “With our vertical supply chain in El Salvador, we are able to offer our customers a fully circular textile recycling system that is now certified.”
The third-party auditing company Peterson performed the Life Cycle Analysis assessment. Peterson collected and evaluated the potential inputs, outputs, and environmental impacts of a Recover x Intradeco tee throughout its life. The analysis compared the environmental impacts of manufacturing a Recover x Intradeco tee (made from 100% recycled material, 50% recycled PET, and 50% upcycled cotton) to those of manufacturing a conventional 100% cotton tee. The impact categories included acidification, global warming potential, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, fossil resource scarcity, ozone depletion, water consumption, and cumulative energy demand. Overall, here’s how everything added up for Recover…
“If you look at the textile industry as a whole, the water and energy usage is really high,” Bill explained. “So what we at Recover have always been looking at, from an electricity and water consumption process, is continuously working to reduce that consumption in comparison to a typical garment, and the overall impact we’re achieving is huge.”
For some further comparison, the impact equivalence of four T-shirts made of 100% virgin conventional cotton is 2,445 smartphone charges and 1,683 600 ml bottles of water, while that of four Recover tees is only 957 smartphone charges and 19 600 ml bottles of water.
In our state of the art El Salvador facility, we’re able to do everything from sourcing raw materials to creating finished products within a ten-mile radius. We also consider how to make the life of every garment a Closed Loop system and are constantly working to minimize any negative environmental impacts of manufacturing within our vertical hyper-localized supply chain and sourcing of recycled materials.
In response to the award of the LCA certification, we at Recover are ever more inspired to keep doing what we’ve been doing since day one, working to make the best, most environmentally friendly, and socially-responsible products possible.
“As far as next steps for us, the LCA certification further validates what we’re doing and places importance on our continued investment in addressing these high-impact areas,” Bill described. “This award of an LCA certification just puts more emphasis on why we need to continue to push the envelope and stay at the forefront of the apparel industry in sustainability; we hope to bring our practices to be not just something we do, but more of an industry standard. That’s really our goal, to be the pioneers in this and continue to try and learn as much as we can and constantly improve.”
