Infinite Athletic
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
Infinite Athletic is the double circular brand for the world of sport.
Only 3% of all of our garments are coming from recycling material.
And 1% only of all garments sold are eventually coming back into the loop.
There is enough plastic out there to create sport garments for generations.
A full ecosystem to recollect waste from the players and convert them back into their own sport's garments, garments which are 100% recyclable, infinitely.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
Infinite Athletic is the first 100% circular apparel sport brand for the world of sport, starting with tennis.
It all started with transforming tennis racket strings into 100% recycled quality garments.
And it never ends, it transforms eco-conceived 100% recyclable garments into garments infinitely.
Thanks to the involvement of the ecosystem/community (players, federations, and tennis clubs), the model is based on:
- Collection centre for rackets strings within the proper tennis club
- Centre point of communication on sustainability, circularity, brand values
- Funnel low from clubs’ marketing effort to Infinite www
- Special sales events with club collaboration
- Collection centre for end-of-life garments within the proper tennis club
It relies on our mission, the 3 C:
• Circularity
o Use of raw material that went to landfills
o Eco-conception of the garment so that it is 100% recyclable
o No use of chemicals
o Colored pigments within the thread itself
• Chain
o Totally local production chain. Less than 100kms between raw material / recycled / thread / garment
o Sales chain for “pre-orders”, limiting the over-stock as much as possible
o Respect the prices of the chain to have a win-win in this
o Social impact with% of sales for NGOs
o Use of ecological means for transport
• Community
o Use of the community (tennis, mountain, sea, etc ...) for the "engagement" of its members
o Participation in the eco-conception of the product through collection within the clubs
o We solve the logistics of collecting the garment, once used. Well, the player leaves it in his own club, eliminating the friction of logistics.
Key objectives for sustainability
Infinite Athletic mission is to solve the main big issues of the textile industry, which is fully linear.
- Only 3% of the garments on sales are not coming from new natural resources.
- The production process of the textile industry accounts for 10% of the contamination on earth (water's consumption, water's contamination, energy consumption, CO2 emission, etc...).
- The fast-fashion during the usage's stage implies stock clearance, unsold garments sent to landfills, etc....
- Only 1 % of all end-of-life garments are being eventually recycled.
That is unberable and a global solution need to be found.
This is what we are fixing for the world of sport with the implementation of a complete ecosystem which:
. Doesn't extract any new natural resources as it recollect the waste from the different sports to transform them into new garments for this same sports (ex: racket strings into new tennis shirts and shorts).
- Reduce drastically the production's contamination through implementation of technologies that reduces the water consumption by more than 70% and reduces the CO2 Emission and Energy consumption by more than 50%.
- Our collection is atemporal and use limited number of yarns variation and different fabrics in order to reduce as much as possible the stock clearance as the garments never get old-fashioned.
- Our garments are 100% recycled but, most important, 100% recyclable. It means our garments are being collected at the same time than the other material, together in the same containers we are putting in the different clubs and federations.
This implementation of such ecosystem has started in the tennis world and, soon to be, will be extended to other verticals (mountain, sea, etc...).
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The underlying goal of this project is to bring several aspects back to the textile world:
- Elegant Aesthetics of the atemporal collections
- Importance of the technology within the yarns
- Putting back craftmanship into the fabric stage
- Importance of the R&D in the ecoconception in order to provide a recyclable solution
All those elements are essentials to come back to a virtuous industry.
- Elegant aesthetics to get an adoption rate from the players with an atemporal collection that speaks to their taste, especially starting with tennis where the look and handfeel is very important and act as social differentiator factor.
- Importance of the technology into the yarns: We need to enforce the use of various cross-section within the yarn to get the necessary features within the garments. Hollow-yarn will provide an extra light fabric which will also protect from high temperatures. Bi-yarn to eliminate sweat without the need to introduce chemical conveyors, tetralobal yarns in order to get more shiness, etc...
- Craftmanship throughout the process, especially in the fabric stage. By combining technology (high gages) with specific construction of the yarn within the fabric, we are achieving natural elasticity, very high softness without the need to add softneners, silicons or lycra, which is a killer when talking about full circularity.
- Importance of the R&D: we are continuously working on new full circular concepts. For instance, we are recollecting tennis balls from various clubs we will convert back into soles for tennis shoes. Upper shoes will me made-up with racket strings, sole with tennis balls. The resulting shoe will be 100% recyclable into a new sole.
Key objectives for inclusion
Our company has got a triple impact purpose: circularity, sostenibility and social behavior.
In the social part, we are working in the following areas:
- A sustainable logistic with includes group at risk of exclusion
- Association that will help us to work on the separation of some of our material (tennis cans for exemple)
- Exclusive utilization of a full local supply chain
- Association of customers into the eco-conception of our products
- Affordability with a fair sales price and fair purchase price into all the steps of the chain
To go into more detail:
- The sustainable logistic is using groups of employees with risk of exclusion. Those employees recollect the waste from the clubs/shops with sustainable means (foot, bike, e-car) and bring them back to local city-hubs until there is enough waste to go to our waste management center. Idea is to replicate this business model across Europe, expanding the utilization of social exclude categories.
- We are working with local associations in order to prepare the next step of our project which will require some manipulation of clean waste (removing the metalic cover from tennis cans for instance).
- We have made the bet of utilizing exclusive local chain. Competition usually use fragmented supply chain, which travel up to 30.000 kilometers. Our garment only travel 150 kilometers from the recycling process to the garments (going through spinning and fabric)
- We are associating through polls and sensibilization (in clubs, online) the players to the sustainability and circularity. We are also do this by integrating their comments/will into the new collection styles.
- Our main manifesto is to provide this combination of circularity, sustenibility, design, technicality with a fair price. That means we are using local chain (up to 4 time the price to send to China) and work hand-in-hand with all the steps of the chain by sharing part of the profit
Results in relation to category
Our project is achieving the 2 main purposes we were aiming to pursue.
On one side, we validated the ecosystem, by doing sport verticales, is ready to participate in a larger scope project which is totally disruptive by applying a double circularity, with the help of all of the stakeholders.
We do see the win-win relationships we can put in place thanks to this initial idea.
Furthermorem it clearly showed the intention of the different stakeholders to communicate on sustainability to their direct customers.
Also it is giving us the way, through the clubs, to get direct contact with the players, our customers.
For the life-long cycle, our project is solving the 2 biggest issue of the textile industry.
The fact the garments are manufactured with 97% new natural resources. Not only is it not very sustainable but we will need soon to cope with the reduction of petrol's extraction.
The fact that nobody almost in this industry is recycling their used garments. We have implemented a clear history and process for the players to have their waste transformed into new garments. And those garments are recycled infinitely. All this with the benefit of centralizing all this in the clubs where the players are going anyway.
How Citizens benefit
Citizens, players, where involved since the beginning with their integration in the process of design, price setting, etc...
Civil society through clubs, associations were integrated since inception in order to pre-validate the business model.
Both actions gave us confidence we were in the right directions and allowed us to extend our reach to specialized shops, specialized shops, brands, etc..
This ecosystem needs to come from this bottom-up involvment which will eventually turn into a flying wheel.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The main innovative character comes from the implementation of this ecosystem where we include all the different stakeholders into a same community of goals.
Common practices are still far away from any circularity options, too costly and too cumbersome to put in place by other brands.
It is necessary to have some use cases like ours in the market in order to show that doing right is feasible and necessary for the planet.
Learning transferred to other parties
As explained before, the project will be transferred very soon in other geographical areas.
It will also be replicated to other sport verticals recycling their own waste into their new garments.
Eventually, we are thinking about creating a new business unit which will recycle the other brands' garments into a totally new line of fabric for them, turning a big issue into a new fully recyclable business.