Swimmers at Active Lifestyle Centres in South Gloucestershire could be splashing about in swimwear made from old fishing nets and other industrial waste recovered from the ocean and landfill.
The sustainable swimwear has arrived thanks to a partnership with Australian swimwear brand Zoggs whose Ecolast™ swimwear and accessories are made from a range of recycled materials.
Around 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is left in the oceans each year - and if it isn’t recovered and recycled, it can remain in the marine ecosystem for up to 600 years before it decomposes. The waste is rescued from the oceans and saved from landfill through different initiatives and projects such as The ECONYL Reclaiming Program, The Healthy Seas initiative, and Net-Works.
Once the nets are cleaned and shredded, the prepared waste returns to a raw material where it is transformed into Nylon 6 polymers used to produce the ECONYL yarn. Made from 100% regenerated waste material, the yarn performs as well as any other nylon yarn manufactured using crude oil.
Forty percent of Zoggs’ spring-summer 2019 swimwear has been made from waste recovered from the ocean and landfill, and the plastic in the brand’s goggle packaging has been reduced by 57% – with all packaging to be 100% sustainable by 2020. In addition, 80% of all packaging will include disposal or recovery labels and 10% of profits will be donated by Zoggs to the Healthy Seas Initiative.
The partnership is the latest move by Circadian Trust, the not-for profit organisation that operates Active Lifestyle Centres, to maximise the company’s environmental credentials and follows several other green initiatives, including rainwater harvesting, the use of solar voltaic cells, and LED lighting. The Trust also hold the ISO14001 accreditation in Environmental Management Systems.
Jo Bond, Head of Sphere Leisure at Circadian Trust, said:
“As an organisation, Circadian is committed to reducing its environmental footprint in whatever way we can, so we are very pleased to be able to offer our customers a range of sustainable swimwear. It seems very appropriate that our swimmers are actively helping to clean up water as well as enjoying swimming in it!”
Adrian Pearce, Managing Director for UK and Ireland at Zoggs International, added:
“We put the fabric through its paces in real life conditions and it outperformed standard swimwear fabrics.”
There are currently five Active Lifestyle Centres across South Gloucestershire in Bradley Stoke, Kingswood, Longwell Green, Thornbury and Yate.