10 years of rock solid
commitment to eco-design
As hikers and designers, eco-design is one of our hiking beliefs!
When you love the mountains, you are aware of their greatness... And their fragility.
That is why, at Quechua, it' our commitment to eco-design our hiking products.
A question of impact
What is eco-design? How is it different to classic design?
Well, eco-designing a product means caring about its environmental impact at all stages of its design.
Choosing recycled or biosourced components, manufacturing techniques that use as little energy as possible, avoiding waste at all stages in development, creating products with a long life cycle... Those are all the questions associated with this idea.
Questions we all know well, at Quechua, as eco-design is a subject on which we have been working for a long time. It all started with our fleeces...
Fleece is popular
Ah fleece: an essential for hiking in the mountains! Invented in 1979, it is ideal to protect from the cold without sweating, and optimising what is known as "thermal comfort". That's the plus side of the material that is so convenient.
However, this essential for walking in the cold weather also has a big weakness from an environmental point of view: its main component is plastic. More precisely, Polyethylene terephthalate, a polyester with an unpronounceable name that we know under its acronym: PET.
Basically, doing without hiking clothing that does not contain plastic would mean doing without fleece and going back to... itchy wool! Yeah. You won't be so warm anymore. Luckily, different approach of fleece is possible to limit our impact on the environment and we can reconcile fleece with our values.
What is an eco-designed product
It is a product with the lowest possible environmental impact during its life cycle. This key product, fleece, exemplifies what we are trying to do. So since we cannot ban polyester, we can do without new polyester. And make great fleece jackets with recycled polyester.
When plastic thinks its a jacket
At Quechua, we have been recycling so that "fleece" rhymes with "circular economy" for over ten years now (so a long chapter in the story that began in 1997).
In 2010, we changed our production to make fleece using plastic bottles and recycled textiles. "Second hand" PET, to avoid making new plastic. In 2014, we worked out that re-use of bottles enabled us to recycle 2000 tonnes of waste in one year. Today, we’re making great quality fleeces composed of at least 66% (men’s models), 70% (women’s models) and 71% (junior’s models) of recycled polyester for 90% of our models.
That doesn't mean you can abandon your water bottles on the footpath and we will make your new jacket! "Hike up, pick up" is our creed ! That simply means that a Quechua fleece lengthens the life cycle of plastic components generated by other products, rather than producing more. And when you are careful about your impact on the environment, we think that it will allow you to hike lighter...
Life is so flask
Anyway, why are we still speaking about "water" bottles: we all use flasks now, no? At Quechua, you have a wide choice of flasks. Stainless flasks and food boxes is one of the concepts we have also been working on these past few years, in the Quechua worldwide Design centre. Why does stainless change everything? Because it is one of the raw materials that has the lowers environmental impact. Infinitely recyclable, it doesn't change over time. Moreover, its laser engraving marking is solvent free. Basically, we have a steely belief in stainless!
Old tyres and castor oil
Our recent work on stainless steel has enabled us to make another step towards one of our greatest targets: become a brand whose products are all eco-designed. We are getting there! In 2021, Quechua already boasts 159 eco-designed products.
In addition to recycled plastic in our fleeces and stainless flasks and food boxes, for a long time we have used:
- organic cotton in our socks and our children's products
- recycled polyester in our t-shirts and leggings
- rubber from recycled tyres in the soles of our walking shoes...
We are increasingly interested in biosourced materials, sometimes particularly innovative, like the Rilsan Clear G850 Rnew: this polymer made from castor oil is used in our sunglasses. The frames are not varnished, as is often the case in these types of products.
Because as we see it through our (well protected) eyes, the planet does not really need those chemical components...
Fabulous fab'
At Quechua and Decathlon, being an eco-designer means that we have re-thought the technical processes at the heart of our products. For example, we have become great proponents of dope-dyeing, a dyeing process that minimise water use in the production. Our dope-dyed textiles are mass dyed, using colour pigments when the yarn is manufactured. Our navy blue jacket and socks are dyed using this technique.
Another technique that has improved eco-design in our manufacturing process is bi-ton dyeing: simply, we only dye one out of every two threads. The natural thread gives the garment a mottled effect. With this alternating dyeing, we have reduced the CO2 impact of our MH100 tent by 41%. And since environmental progress is hidden in the details, we have also started using laser engraving to mark our products, as it doesn't require solvents, unlike traditional branding.
Target 100% eco-designed products by 2026
Thanks to all these steps taken to reduce our environmental impact, and everything we have learn during the process to lengthen the lifecycle of a product, we have already reached a first target: all our new products are now eco-designed. For the future, we have set ourselves a challenge: from 2026, we want 100% of our products in our catalogue to be eco-designed.
