Allbirds apparel takes flight
Earth-friendly textiles include fibres made from snow crab shells
The world doesn't need another T-shirt.
In the last 15 years the global production of clothing has about doubled, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation. In 2020, an estimated 100 billion garments are forecast to be produced. The clothing industry accounts for 10 per cent of the yearly global carbon emissions, with that number expected to increase, if production processes and output remains as projected, to 50 per cent by 2030.
But Tim Brown, co-founder of the San Francisco-headquartered company Allbirds, is adamant that the world can actually use another T-shirt. If, and only if, it's a better T-shirt. One that pushes the collective conversation about sustainability. And offers textile innovation that could, if adopted by other fashion producers, change the tide of textiles and the resource-intensive production processes required to create them.
“Does the world need more apparel? The answer is no. But, it needs better apparel that is more thoughtfully considered,” Brown said recently over the phone. “There's a combination of factors that make us feel we have a really good answer to that question. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it.”
Launching this month, Allbirds Apparel is designed to offer a curated collection of “fashion and utilitarian basics” for men and women including the Trinoxo Tee ($65), Wool Jumper ($185), Wool Cardi ($200) and Trino Puffer ($340).
A pillar of the product lineup is the patented Trinoxo textile, which features a chitosan fibre derived from discarded snow crab shells from Newfoundland. The sustainably sourced, renewable material is the “second most abundant biopolymer on Earth,” according to the company.
“It replaces materials like zinc and aluminum materials that are used for antimicrobial parts of apparel, which are extractive materials and are finite,” Brown explains of the chitosan, which is a byproduct of the crab-fishing industry. The Marine Stewardship Council-certified textile, Brown says, adds a lot of “positives” to the garment's technical capabilities including requiring a lower wash-per-wear ratio.
“Fundamentally, the average T-shirt that's made out of virgin polyester or synthetics has greater carbon impact than the product that we make. And, similarly, the product that we're making with our Trino material is ... derived from the natural world. It opens up the opportunity, as we get further into it with regenerative agriculture, to significantly lower that number and the environmental impact in a way that synthetics simply can't,” Brown says.
The knit items are crafted from Zq-certified New Zealand Merino wool, while the puffer jacket uses a recycled polyester-tencel blend for the fill, a Merino wool-tencel blend for the exterior and a fluorine-free finish. The collection, which has been a “couple of years in the making,” according to Brown, is expected to be expanded in coming seasons.
Another unique element of the Allbirds Apparel launch is the presence of the carbon cost attached to each garment.
“This will be the first range of apparel that we're aware of that takes what we've done in footwear and labels the products that we make with the kilograms of carbon that are emitted in the production, all the way to the supply chain. In the same way that calories go on food,” Brown explains.
The transparency, he says, is a further example of the “accountability and objective information” the company aims to offer customers when considering their products. It's also a metric offered up as a reminder to the growing Allbirds team that, while they're doing better than others, they've still got some work to do.
The company is “focused on the idea that climate change is the problem of our generation,” according to Brown. With reducing the overall impact of fashion on the planet as its mission, Allbirds is working to find “better ways to create the products and services that we love, with net-zero or as close to zero carbon impact as we possibly can,” he adds.
“As a business, we're able to measure our complete carbon footprint, use offsets in the shortterm, but fundamentally focus all our innovation and energy into reducing those numbers.
“There's nowhere to hide,” Brown says.