ATHLETIC WEAR

JUST APPROVED ATHLETIC WEAR

A FEW NOTES ON ATHLETIC WEAR

1. Researching and assessing athletic wear brands was no walk in the park.

It was really hard because of the multiple issues we had to wrap our heads around, particularly with respect to types of materials and chemicals used in production. This also means that there are a ton of issues for the brands themselves to think about, to truly make a sustainable product. Which is also probably why, TBH, we didn’t find many who were truly thinking about sustainability and ethics holistically, let alone trying to operationalize it or actively improving their practices across the board… Which leads us to note #2…

2. There aren’t as many brands and as much of a product range as we’d like to give our community for our JUST APPROVED™ list.

We’re sorry about that, but we’re hopeful that other brands whose designs and performance we love will be inspired to consider using recycled fabrics, low impact dyes, non toxic chemicals, etc. and being more transparent about their supply chains.

3. But there are a few shining stars.

And we’ll walk you through the brands we’ve selected and the criteria we measured them up against, so you can see exactly how they’ve been evaluated and why they’ve made the cut. We also have a section on Nike and Adidas (on the bench!) – two of the world’s largest active wear brands – to recognize how larger brands are making big strides in product innovation.

4. And there is plenty of hope for the future!

As a final note: many of the brands selected for JUST APPROVED™ are very young with limited product ranges, small teams and shorter supply chains – which equals less stuff for a brand to worry about. Great for them but hard to judge against brands with wider product ranges and more supply chains. We like to think of them as rising stars among varsity players. We recognize that as a brand grows and scales its production, it becomes harder to stay true to its original commitment to sustainability, but we’re willing to take a bet on these rising stars and want to champion their commitment to sustainable and ethical production from the start.

 THE COMMITTEE

We were thrilled and so honored to have an all-star committee for Athletic Wear, with serious sustainability and production chops 💯 They are:

JUSTIN DEKOSZMOVSZKY

Co-Founder & Chief Impact Officer
INBONIS
Former Head of Sustainability Strategy
PUMA
Industry Expert

AMY DUFAULT

Digital Content and Communications Director
Brooklyn Fashion+Design Accelerator
Industry Expert
Context + Style Expert

TIMO RISSANEN

Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability
Parsons School of Design, The New School
Industry Expert

RHEA RAKSHIT

Chief Product Designer
Project JUST
Project JUST Committee Member

SHAHD ALSHEHAIL

Co-Founder
Project JUST
Project JUST Committee Member

 OUR BASELINE

Before we do a deep dive into any brand, we look at the environmental and social practices of each of the nominated brands and whether or not they share enough information for us to research. In some cases, brands are doing great work from an environmental perspective, but share little or nothing on their labor practices, and vice versa – which isn’t enough to get them shortlisted. In addition to looking at how transparent the brand is, we also consider availability, accessibility (size and price) quality and aesthetic. Unfortunately, even if a brand self identifies as ethical but doesn’t share how, we can’t shortlist them for in-depth research.

Here are the JUST APPROVED™ Athletic Wear Criteria:

DO NO HARM

The brand has thought holistically about our 8 research categories:

• Size and business model
• Transparency and traceability
• Labor Conditions
• Environment
• Innovation
• Intention
• Management
• Community

More about what we mean by each section here.

ATHLETIC WEAR CONTEXT

Each brand we selected has thought specifically about issues that were raised in our research into athletic wear production. Apart from certain standards like living wages and working conditions that we expect across categories, two issues stood out for us in the context of athletic wear: raw materials and chemicals. We’ve summarized these issues in a table below, and if you’re really interested – we’ve also made the full context research framework available here.

INNOVATION

The brand is innovative in its approach and is moving the industry in a positive direction. They’re creating new techniques and standards to spread new and better practices.

THE CONTEXT

Sprint towards the right fabrics

MATERIALS

Full disclosure: there was a great internal team debate about whether natural or synthetic fabrics are better to get active in, which we believe is reflective of opinions outside of the JUST team, as well. And although we recognize that natural fibers are always better for the environment, we also hear the argument that it’s pretty difficult to run 29 miles in just organic cotton.

And so, we got to know our fibers really, really well. Here’s a handy list to better understand these materials – whether we’re looking for a pair of high performance running shorts or comfortable yoga leggings.

COTTON: 🌿

Cotton is a super thirsty crop that uses a ton of water to be produced. To add to that, conventional cotton in particular also requires heavy use of herbicides and pesticides that badly harm soil and water sources, and frequently also the farmers who apply the chemicals themselves.

INNOVATION:

Better Cotton: in 2013 through the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), WWF was able to help farmers reduce water usage by 39%. BCI also encourages farmers to use drip irrigation which is estimated to reduces water usage by 50%.

Organic cotton: farmers do not use chemical pesticides at all when growing organic cotton, and use natural techniques to ward off insects and threats. This makes it both less dangerous and more sustainable for both the people growing it as well as the environment.

POLYESTER: 💥

The agents used to make polyester are petrochemicals, which incur a high ecological and social cost of oil exploration and extraction. Nearly 70 billion barrels of oil are used every year to produce polyester (!). The transport of oil also requires a lot of resources, adding to their carbon footprint. Polyester uses twice as much energy to produce as cotton.

INNOVATION:

Recycled polyester (rPET): Uses materials already in existence for its production, i.e. post-industrial fibre waste and post consumer plastic. rPET also produces far less emissions than does the production of virgin polyester. But keep in mind, it’s still more energy intensive to recycle PET into a fiber than to use organically produced natural fibers.

NYLON: ⚡️

Like polyester, the agents used to make nylon are petrochemicals, (see above). Producing nylon is also extremely energy intensive: 1kg of fabric consumes 150 MJ, compared to 109 MJ for polyester and 50 MJ for cotton. The production process also results in the emission of nitrous oxide, which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas.

INNOVATION:

Recycled nylon: Produced with materials already in existence, i.e. pre-consumer industrial waste, and post-consumer waste like fishnets, carpets and textiles. Also requires much less energy to produce than virgin nylon, but uses the same amount of energy as virgin polyester.

WOOL: 🐏

The shearing process for wool production can be extremely harmful / painful for sheep. To add to that, in some cases sheep are treated with injectible pesticides, or bathed in pesticides, to control for parasite infection. The cleaning / scouring of wool also produces an effluent with a high suspended solids content + pollution index, which can result in the pollution of water sources.

INNOVATION:

Organic wool: Sheep graze on land not treated with pesticides, and are not dipped in synthetic pyre-thoids or organophosphates (technical speak for harmful chemical pesticides).

Responsible Wool Standard: “A voluntary global standard that addresses the welfare of sheep and of the land they graze on. On farms, the certification ensures that sheep are treated with respect to their five freedoms and also ensures best practices in the management and protection of the land.”

Kick those chemicals out of your system •  📷 : VOGUE

CHEMICALS

Many of us also require a high level of “performance” out of our athletic wear, and look for products and fabrics with qualities like anti-microbial, anti-odor, wicking or even “high performance blend”. But let’s make sure we know the effects of many of the chemicals used to produce these magical properties. Here are a few to keep in mind that are particularly problematic, if not downright frightening 👀

Triclosan, used as a coating for antibacterial and antimicrobial fabrics has been shown to call cancer in mice.

Nanoparticle Silver, used in anti-odor and antimicrobial activewear (but not tested for consumer safety!) has been potentially tied to endocrine disruption, and according to the NIH “produce adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects in both humans and wildlife.” 

Antimony, present in 80-85% of all virgin Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) aka Polyester, gets released into the environment during the production process, and has been proven to cause irritation of the respiratory tract and interference with our immune systems.

Per- and poly-fluorinated chemicals (PFCs) such as PFOS and PFOA can be really harmful due to their hormone disrupting properties, with impacts on the reproductive system and the immune system.

Phthalates, used mainly as plasticisers (or softeners) in plastics, especially PVC are also known for toxicity and their hormone-disrupting effects.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Handbags and Leather Goods! 👜 Submit your nominations here by September 12.

DISCLAIMER:

Project JUST does not receive any compensation for our research and selection of JUST APPROVED™ lists.

To continue to provide you, the shopper and member of our Project JUST community, with credible research and analysis, we have partnerships with some of the JUST APPROVED™ brands to serve as their affiliate. Once and only if a brand is selected, do they have the opportunity to participate in our online shop and we at Project JUST receive a small percentage of the sale if a reader discovers and chooses to shop a JUST APPROVED™ brand. This allows you to directly shop from sustainable, ethical JUST APPROVED™ brands and allows Project JUST to continue our due diligence and research work. If you have any questions or comments about our partnerships with JUST APPROVED™ brands or Project JUST, please send them to [email protected].