Samsara Eco and lululemon unveil the world’s first enzymatically recycled nylon 6,6 product
Australian enviro-tech startup, Samsara Eco, and its partner, athletic apparel brand, lululemon, have debuted the world’s first enzymatically recycled nylon 6,6 product. Using recycled nylon 6,6 made with Samsara Eco’s technology, lululemon has created samples of its iconic Swiftly Tech long-sleeve top, representing the first time this type of nylon has been recycled in this way.
Roughly 4 million tonnes of nylon 6,6 is created per year. It’s one of the most commonly used plastics in the textile industry and is a foundational fiber used by lululemon to make many of its bestselling products. Nylon 6,6 has been notoriously difficult to recycle and because of its tough, heavy-duty properties has been used in a breadth of industries like fashion, automotive, and electronics.
Working with lululemon, Samsara Eco has pioneered a new (patent pending) technology that makes it possible to put waste to work by extracting nylon 6,6 from end-of-life stage textiles and demonstrates the potential to create a fully circular ecosystem for apparel.
The Swiftly samples illustrate lululemon’s end-of-life vision of circularity by taking lululemon nylon apparel at the end-of-life stage — including lululemon leggings — and combining it with other non-textile materials to create recycled nylon for use in new lululemon products. Using its library of plastic-eating enzymes, Samsara Eco’s manufacturing process is completed within hours and at a low temperature, to create a more sustainable product.
