Profit-wise, it’s going swimmingly for swimwear makers. Eco-wise, they’re drowning

In the first half of the year, before the spectre of the Delta variant arose, consumers were in a liberated mood. With airline tickets and high heels, swimsuits became must-haves for shoppers eager to escape quarantine. Globally, consumers spent $2.7bn (about R40bn) on swimwear in the first half of 2021, a 19% jump from the same period in 2019.

For decades, most swimsuits have been made with Spandex, which was invented by materials scientists at DuPont in the US in 1959 as a lighter, more breathable alternative to rubber. The petroleum-based material quickly became standard in the apparel industry and in 1972 Speedo became the first company to sell Spandex swimwear. Up to 2017, polyester and Spandex made up about 65% of the fabrics used in the swimwear market.

As new bikinis, one-pieces and briefs rotate into people’s wardrobes, the worn-out ones typically wind up in landfills. “Spandex is a very difficult material to recycle,” says Shannon Bergstrom, sustainability brand manager at Recycle Track Systems in the US. The synthetic fibres are too short for mechanical processes to sort and no effective chemical methods exist to recover the used material. Consumers can always donate or resell used suits, but there’s no guarantee anyone will buy them, even if they’re new with tags. “I’m hopeful that companies will pick up the bill to create solutions,” Bergstrom adds.

Swimwear is our biggest challenge. There’s no way to take a swimsuit and recycle it into another swimsuit.

—  Dana Davis, Mara Hoffman

Some are trying. Lycra’s EcoMade line includes fibres drawn from pre-consumer Spandex scraps and blends of recycled polyethylene terephthalate, a common plastic. Speedo sells souped-up performance suits in chlorine-resistant Spandex and Lycra’s Xtra Life fibre, which promises to last longer than conventional fibres, thereby creating less waste. Perhaps the most popular among boutique and fashion-orientated swimwear lines is Econyl, made by the decades-old Aquafil, which recovers fishing nets from oceans and industrial carpets from landfills to spin into yarn. 

“Swimwear is our biggest challenge,” says Dana Davis, head of sustainability at eco-conscious US brand Mara Hoffman. The company designs its suits with Econyl and Repreve, a performance fibre made from recycled materials such as plastic bottles, and will soon work with another recycled nylon called Q-Nova. “We’re not taking virgin fossil fuels,” Davis says, “but let’s be honest, this isn’t the end all be all. There’s no way to take a swimsuit and recycle it into another swimsuit.” Plus, Davis points out, these recycled plastic suits release microplastics into the water supply, just like new Spandex.

The brands using Econyl and Repreve hope those products’ parent companies figure out how the materials can be further reused, and soon. “We’re e-mailing them quite often to find out when we can recycle these materials,” says Abigail Lorick, creative director at sustainable US swimwear line Ansea. “Our big goal for 2021 is to figure out how we can start taking back end-of-life swimwear.”

— Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com