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How green is our workout gear?

Q: How green is our workout gear?

A: No one wants to work out in a cold pool of their own sweat. Hence the appeal of high-tech fabrics designed to wick away perspiration so you can focus on the burn instead of your lagoon-sized sweat stains. But just how eco-friendly is activewear?

If you’re jogging, boot-camping or hot yoga-ing your way to good health, chances are pretty much 99 to 1 that you’re sweating in petroleum. We all are. It’s the nature of spandex (aka lycra), nylon and all the other fabrics designed for the sporty/stretchy set.

About half of all fibres used by the textile biz come from crude oil and natural gas, and that adds up to 38 million tons of synthetic fibre annually. Since one fleece jacket takes a litre of petroleum to make, a heck of a lot of oil goes to fuel our synthetic fabric dependence. While a lack of Lululemon pants may not factor into our fears for the post-oil era, I personally don’t want to see more naked joggers come Armageddon.

But seriously, what are the impacts of sporting petrol today? Well, environmentally speaking, you can factor in the damage of drilling for and refining the oil itself, then tabulate the high energy demands of making fibres out of oil. It takes 109 megajoules of energy to product a kilo of polyester. A lot of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide as well as polluting hydrocarbons and nitrous oxide, are pumped into the atmosphere when this stuff gets processed.

And did you know washing our synthetic clothes is responsible for serious micro-plastic pollution in our oceans and waterways?

FYI, spandex is a polyurethane fibre, and Coolmax is basically an extra-breathable polyester trademarked by Duport, sometimes woven with cotton, wool or eucalyptus-based Tencel. Coolmax does offer an EcoMade textile made of 97 per cent recycled pop bottles, but it’s mostly in socks.

You can’t entirely get away from synthetics even in greener activewear, but you can reduce your oil dependency by looking for fibres with minimal use of spandex and friends. Nike’s Dri-fit fabrics incorporate maybe 10 per cent organic cotton into this roughly 60 per cent cotton fabric, but there are greener and more fairly made clothes out there.

Sadly, Lululemon has really let its green cred slip when it comes to textile choices. The Vancouver-born company had a lot more organic cotton and other eco fabric options just a few years ago. Now if you ask for green textiles, the staff start humming and hawing, searching the store for the one men’s T-shirt made of organic cotton. Online, though, Lululemon has a bigger selection of VitaSea, aka SeaCell, fabric (which is 70 per cent conventional cotton, 6 per cent spandex and 24 per cent seaweed-based fibre.)

By the way, Lululemon’s grand claims about its SeaCell sports bras releasing marine amino acids and vitamins earned a smackdown from the Competition Bureau in 2007. Testing by the New York Times also suggested that the fabric didn’t really contain seaweed, but Lululemon maintains it does. I’d cut the company more slack if the clothes were all made in Canada, but they’re mostly sewn offshore.

Want some greener Canadian-made activewear? Scarborough-sewn Modrobes has a great online shop loaded with men’s and women’s sports clothing made from 96 per cent eucalyptus-based Lyocell and just 4 per cent spandex (modrobes.com). And Vancouver-made Tonic Lifestyle Apparel offers a mix of both conventional and eco threads. (The eco line is made of Oeko-Tex-certified bamboo, which means it won’t off-gas weird chems, organic cotton and 5 per cent spandex (Mytonic.ca).

Quebec-made Respecterre whips up all sorts of outfits for men and women out of organic fair trade cotton, hemp and rayon from bamboo or greener Tencel from eucalyptus (respecterre.com).

T.O.-made Squeezed has pretty yoga pants and camis, all with designs silkscreened using water-based inks, made of organic cotton with a little spandex (squeezed.ca). Victoria-based Salts Organic has several styles of yoga capris, leggings, Ts and more made of organic cotton and rayon from bamboo (saltsorganic.com).

Want a little more hippie in your activewear? Try Maha Devi Design. (mahadevidesign.com). Another Canadian firm, EcoGear, makes some activewear out of recycled cotton and polyester, as well a JuteStyle line that uses viscose/rayon from fast-growing jute. Like bamboo rayon, jute rayon is chemical-intensive to make, but at least jute is a more sustainable material than petroleum (eco-gear.ca).

Chartreusestyle.com carries a bunch of eco activewear made with organic cotton, recycled polyester or both from Ecogear and Blue Canoe.

All of the above should help us end our sweaty love-in with petro-fibres and soothe our conscience next time we want to be at one with the earth while wearing yoga pants.

Got a question?

Send your green queries to ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/ecoholicnation

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