Fast Fashion and the use of Polyester

Did you know that around 60% of the textiles used in fashion are made from crude oil? Out of these textiles, Polyester is the culprit for the globe’s most widely-used fibre.

So from drilling and extracting from the earth, this crude oil goes through the following stages to finally make it onto coat hanger:

Ethylene Glycol is mixed with dimethyl terephthalate, causing a reaction in which polymer is created.

This polymer is then mixed with terephthalic acid which creates liquid polymer.

The liquid polymer is then extruded through holes to make lengths of material that is cooled and chopped into chips.

The chips are then heated to 270° and melted back into a liquid, where through tiny holes (spinnerets), long threads are formed, which are then cooled to create a fibre.

These finished fibres are then twisted together and spun onto reels to be woven into fabrics.

Go to your wardrobe and grab a handful of garments from the rack and they’ll almost certainly be items with Polyester among them. In fact, the majority of equestrian brands out there use polyester because being manufactured abroad usually means cheaper fabrics and keeping costs to a minimum.

At Stockinjur we use a quality nylon-based fabric. Although nylon is also petroleum based, we use a nylon created from recycled landfill. So whilst our fabric is plastic-based, it is reusing old material instead of drilling for it.

Of course, this is only a temporary solution to somewhat reducing our carbon footprint, as eventually there will no doubt be a solution to creating fabrics which behave like polyester/nylon without the use of oil at all.