When Canadian outdoor clothing brand Arc’teryx set out to create its most circular product yet, it drew a hard line in the sand. “We were not interested in creating a product that asked people to accept lower performance in exchange for lower impact,” says VP of advanced concepts Alexandra Plante.
But balancing performance and impact, durability and recyclability, is no small feat. It would take Arc’teryx four years to complete the Sperro SV — a technical hardshell jacket, launching September 4. Plante says it was worth the wait: the Sperro SV is the first fashion product (of any brand globally) to receive the Testex Circularity label, developed by Swiss testing and certification institute Testex to provide a common framework to substantiate circularity.
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It is also the first flagship product under Arc’teryx’s new circularity initiative, System 0, which brings together product design, preferred materials, repair, services, manufacturing, consumer engagement, and responsible end-of-life solutions. Brand CEO Stuart Haselden refers to System 0 as “a systemic change in how we are thinking about and building our business for the future”.
Facing the biggest hurdles first
While some brands target low-hanging fruit first — simpler products like T-shirts, fleeces, and basic lightweight jackets, which are easier to produce in a more sustainable or circular manner — Arc’teryx went in the opposite direction. “The hardshell is the most iconic product category that we have. It’s also the most technically complex,” says Plante. “It’s trusted by our most discerning users — our mountain guides, professional athletes, and search and rescue teams. We chose the hard shell because it’s difficult. We knew if we succeeded here, we could succeed anywhere else in our brand.”
When designing circular products, many brands — including Swedish sportswear brand Houdini, alongside VF Corporation-owned brands Napapijri and The North Face — take a monomaterial approach. This means using a single fiber type throughout, so garments can be chemically recycled as a whole, without time and cost-intensive disassembly for separate waste streams. For fashion and everyday apparel, cotton is often the monomaterial of choice. But in the outdoor industry, where synthetics are the default for qualities such as waterproofing and stretch, nylon 6 has become the industry standard, due to its durability and single monomer structure that makes chemical recycling more straightforward.
For Arc’teryx, a monomaterial design was never going to be the way forward, because the technical nature of its garments requires more complex fabrication.
Instead, the jacket is made from a three-layer Gore-Tex fabric, of which the face fabric (the innermost textile layer) and the backer fabric (the outermost textile layer) are recycled econyl nylon 6, aligning with the industry’s current recycling capabilities to maximize material recovery. At the end of life, they can be chemically recycled by Econyl’s Italian manufacturer Aquafil. The reflector, zips, sliders, cord locks, and the middle, film-like membrane layer of the fabric cannot currently be recycled (though pilot testing for recycling the membrane has taken place).
