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10 products made from innovative materials you'd never expect - including shoes, leggings, mattresses, and pasta
10 products made from innovative materials you'd never expect - including shoes, leggings, mattresses, and pasta
Connie Chen,Connie ChenJun 18, 2019, 18:02 IST
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The use of non-traditional materials to make clothing, food, and home goods is on the rise.
In an effort to help reduce the amount of waste on this planet, many companies are repurposing plastic water bottles that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.
Others create products, such as chickpea pasta or copper mattresses, that boast the benefits of unexpectedly versatile ingredients and materials.
Used plastic bottles are thrown out, chickpeas are blended into hummus, and wool is woven into coats - these are the accepted beliefs about some of the common materials and ingredients we encounter in our day-to-day lives.
A growing number of companies, however, are choosing not to settle for the way things are and instead have chosen to push for the way things should be.
Whether they're looking to balance out the harms of human activity on this planet or help people lead healthier lives through diet and sleep, these companies have discovered innovative ways to turn unexpected materials into clothing, accessories, and food, all without sacrificing functionality or quality.
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You would never guess what the products from these 10 companies are made from.
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Rothy's has repurposed nearly 13 million plastic water bottles (as of this writing) to make the light, comfortable, and stylish flats you see gracing the streets of San Francisco and Manhattan. The knit uppers are made from 100% post-consumer plastic, while the foam components in the insoles are made from other recycled shoes. Thanks to a production method involving a combination of 3D knitting machines and hand assembly, the shoes are soft, but still form-fitting, durable, and even machine-washable.
Considering that a runner was able to set a Guinness World Record for "Fastest Half Marathon in a Suit" while wearing Ministry of Supply, you probably have more than enough proof to know that it will hold up as you travel to and from downtown and uptown client meetings or when you step out into a humid summer day.
Ministry of Supply employs a variety of innovative techniques to make you not dread putting on workwear: the Responsive Tee has coffee-infused recycled polyester to absorb and neutralize odor, the Apollo dress shirts use a NASA-developed "Phase Change" material that's 19 times more breathable than cotton, and the Kinetic collection's Japanese Primeflex polyester is water-repellant and somehow never wrinkles.
For years, Sunski demonstrated its environmental ethos by participating in 1% for the Planet, which meant it donated 1% of sales to environmental non-profits. In 2017, the company took its commitment a step further by making sunglasses from plastic scraps that would otherwise end up in a landfill in Illinois. Nearly all of these polarized, scratch-resistant glasses cost under $70 and look like any other pair you'd want to bring with you to the beach, mountains, or road trip — the only difference is that you're not leaving the planet worse off when you buy them.
In case you couldn't already tell from its minimalist offerings, ADAY has always valued conscious design. Not one to be complacent, it spent nine months figuring out how to continue to optimize environmental impact at the design, sourcing, and production levels. The designers came up with three solutions and its second "experiment" resulted in the Waste Nothing Jacket, which is made from 41 plastic water bottles. The fabric is weighty yet cool and breathable, and the jacket can be worn two different ways.
If you can't imagine a life without pasta but also have trouble reconciling this love with traditional dried pasta's nutrition-deficient qualities, then you should try Banza. It's made from chickpeas so you're eating double the protein, four times the fiber, and nearly half the net carbs of wheat noodles. Now, hummus isn't the only way you can enjoy chickpeas. They're low on the glycemic index, and the ones Banza uses are certified non-GMO. In the end, the swap doesn't feel like a dramatic sacrifice because it still cooks, feels, and tastes similar to regular pasta.
Parley for the Oceans is an organization that raises awareness about the threats towards our planet's oceans. Adidas is a shoe and athletic apparel company. These seemingly disparate entities came together to take plastic waste from beaches before it reaches the ocean and turn it into a running shoe that's just as high-performing and comfortable as you would expect from Adidas. The Parley line is just the beginning: Adidas' goal is to make all of its shoes from recycled plastic by 2020.
Other than recycled plastic, it turns out shoes can also be made from merino wool and eucalyptus tree fibers. With its soft, breathable sneakers and loungers, Allbirds flips the commonly held belief that wool is uncomfortable and irritating on its head. Meanwhile, its cool tree fibers are sourced from sustainable farms that minimize fertilizer use and reliance on irrigation. Recycled plastic isn't completely out of the picture either because each pair of Allbirds laces is made from one plastic water bottle.
One Insider Picks reporter's favorite pair of leggings comes not from a well-known athleisure giant, but a start-up called Girlfriend Collective. It takes 25 recycled water bottles to make these flattering, compressive, and no-pill leggings. Another innovative, eco-friendly option is the moisture-wicking LITE legging, made from recycled fishing nets — the biggest pollutant in our oceans today. The brand's Cupro collection of silky shirts takes advantage of cotton linter, a soft fiber that sticks to cotton seeds and usually gets thrown out.
There's no one all-encompassing secret to getting good sleep, but breathable, temperature-controlled, and supportive mattresses and pillows are surely parts of the equation. At the same time, you can't spend a large chunk of your life occupying the same bed without it accumulating bacteria, fungus, and dead skin, so PangeaBed infuses its latex sleep products with copper to give you a more sanitary experience. Copper has anti-microbial properties and PangeaBed is one of only a few mattress companies that puts these properties to good use.
Our review of Patagonia's recycled plastic backpack addresses the question all shoppers have on their minds — does using recycled materials compromise quality? The Arbor Pack collection of light, rugged, and comfortable backpacks dismisses these doubts immediately. As an outdoors brand, Patagonia has always advocated caring for the environment and it's putting its money where its mouth by turning used soda bottles, unusable manufacturing waste, and worn-out garments into polyester fibers.
