A leader in traceable, high-performance down insulation for garments and bedding announced the highest fill-power ever achieved in a certified post-consumer recycled down, hailed as RENU:750.
Until now, brands seeking to use recycled down had to settle for smaller clusters and lower fill power. ALLIED partners previously have relied on RENU:700 as the industry’s first Global Recycle Standard (GRS)-certified post-consumer recycled down, which guaranteed more than 700 fill power, but with limitations on highly technical apparel.
The launch of RENU:750 represents an ultra-high-performance material and the pinnacle of ALLIED’s upcycling/recycling program for use in the most technical and luxury driven products.
“Down is already an incredibly sustainable ingredient sourced as a by-product of the food industry, but with a recent push toward circularity, recycled down has seen a meteoric return,” explained Daniel Uretsky, President of ALLIED Feather + Down.
“The problem with much of the recycled down in the market is that it is difficult to achieve over 700 fill power. With our initial RENU offering, we had to guarantee at least that, but with the quality, we are known for and the level of brands relying on ALLIED insulations, we knew we needed to move beyond the status quo and push the limits of technical performance in recycled material,” he said.
“Looking closely at new supply chains for post-consumer goods — and by having full control of our processing, which many of the other recycled down suppliers sub-contract — we were able to alter the way this post-consumer material was processed and separated to create this insulation that tests over 750 fill power,” Uretsky added.
In a limited launch, RENU:750 is coming to consumers in Fall 2021 with two partner brands: Jones Snowboards in the United States and fashion icon Axel Arigato from the United Kingdom.
ALLIED initially developed the product with Jeremy Jones to find a solution that would fit the needs for extreme technical performance, the lowest impact on the planet, and with animal welfare at the forefront.
“For our apparel line, we followed the same procedure as for the snowboards: we do ‘blind’ field testing. Proto samples are made in different material compositions and then thoroughly field tested. We test, tweak, repeat until we get it right. We did multiple prototype sampling rounds before we made our choices,” Jones, founder of Jones Snowboards, explained. “For a perfect insulator, the ALLIED recycled down came out as the most suitable material for the specific use of this piece of garment.”
