Recycling Down?

all i want to know is are you going to be putting the filium back into prod! I want a replacement for my rab peak smock!

I’d only buy recycled down if you could guarantee it had the same life expectancy as the new stuff. Surely once down has lost its mojo, you’ll never get the same performance?

If one company already uses moulted down then why not more? And also Oxfam/PDSA shops already sift through their donated items to see what they can sell and what is to be dicarded as non recyclable rubbish. The best items are usually dispalyed in the window or are marked at a higher price for designer clothes.

The point about Ramsey was the transportation costs and that we should be producing and recycling goods here in the uk and not relying on the importation of goods.

I don’t want to appear a heartless swine but collecting moulted down? All the little bits that have fallen off amongst the guano and soggy straw? The practicality of getting The sally Army, Oxfam, et al to get their volunteers to select quality down items from the tonnage of clothing they get given is plain daft.

Getting back to Ramsey’s comments. I trust he has suitable employment in place for the Third World countries forced to abandon farming exports. Exports usually sent by boat which is probably the least harmful of long distance carriage methods.

Moulted down is the way forward, I may be a veggie and biased but we are inteligent enough to figure out a way to source it without killing the geese. Also the issue here on recycling is probalbly easier to solve if we made the product from start to finish in the uk then we wouldn’t be considering the shipping of things too and from China. Going green/organic isn’t cheap if you think of the cost of solar heating etc. It would probaly result in a price rise in Alpkit products but that may be worth it and I would happily pay the extra. If more companies enter this market it wil then make them compete and prices would then drop accordingly. Gordon Ramsey hit the nail on the head with trying to ban the shipping of out of season fruit and veg from all over the world. We consume the wrong way we need to consume more sensibly and locally. send your recycled clothing to the clothes banks at the local authority depots and let Alpkit source the recycled items from main recycling depots. If we start sending small/individual items across the country then we just increase the transport impact. Once there becomes a market for recycled technical clothing and down clothing then the system should expand acordingly in the sorting process. But I recon this a distant dream.

No geese will be saved, the down is a by product. You might as well get excellent down from a slaughtered goose as it’s going to loose it’s life anyway. Seeing as the down is a bio-degradable product you are best to bin it as it won’t leave a legacy like plastics. Of far more concern should be the nylon shells around the down which will last an eternity.

I think recycling old garments is the way forward you mention that the only saving is a few geese. This should be the main reason for recycling existing down products. They are living creatures after all and not there just to keep us warm. The Tundra range are excellent and use naturally moulted feathers, the extra cost is well worth me knowing that someone didn’t throttle a goose to keep me warm.

Re-cycling anything is a good idea but I would only do it if it was processed in the UK.

think it’s a fantastic idea (in principal) and i’m always impressed at how conscientious you are.

the vast majority of stuff that would be handed in for recycling would be pretty old and probably have lost quite a bit of insulation.  think you might end up trying to save the world but making sub alp-standard products.  also can’t imagine you would be able to conduct temperature ratings and whatnot on products where the type and quality of down used would vary between individual jackets/bags.

if you could overcome these sort of problems though, i imagine you could be onto a winner, especially if it works out a bit cheaper without any additional environmental impact

and does Alpkit want the hassle of running a scheme for all the disused down products in the UK??!!