Garbage Jacket

Name: Garbage Jacket
Brand: Vollebak
SKU: SWH043GRNXSM
Price: 262.00 CAD
Availability: InStock

Made from plant waste, recycled brass and polyester, and discarded firefighter suits.

$875.00 $262

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Model is 6ft 1 / 185cm with a 39 inch / 99cm chest, and wears size Medium.

Jacket made from old firefighter suits
Zippers and cuffs made from plastic bottles
Fire resistant

Made with everything from plant waste and discarded firefighter suits, to recycled brass and polyester, the Garbage Jacket is a soft, lined, fireproof jacket that reimagines garbage at the very centre of the supply chain, not the bit at the end that no-one wants to look at. Every single second, a garbage truck’s worth of clothing is dumped into landfill somewhere on Earth. So if we want to avoid trashing our planet, we have to start figuring out how to re-use the stuff we already have.

That’s why our Garbage range started with a very simple idea. What if garbage isn’t garbage? What if it’s simply pre-assembled raw materials that we can use to make new things. The Garbage Jacket comes with zippers and cuffs built from old plastic bottles, cord locks made from grain husks, and an outer material built from old firefighter suits that were destined to spend the next few centuries on a rubbish pile.

Technical Details

Outer material made in France: 70% recycled meta-aramid, 30% para-aramid

Lining made in Italy: 100% recycled polyester

Cuff material made in Portugal: 50% recycled cotton, 47% recycled polyester, 3% other fibres

Two side pockets with zippers made from recycled polyester

Zipped inside chest pocket made from recycled polyester

Front zipper with storm flap and metal snap fasteners

Front zipper is made from recycled polyester

Metal snap fasteners made from 80% recycled brass

Elasticated cord adjustment at back of the hood made from recycled polyester

Elasticated cord adjustment at the hem made from recycled polyester

Cord locks at hood and hem made from 50% plant waste

Thread made from recycled polyester

External hanging loop

Jacket weighs 950g

Machine wash 30°C

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A soft, fireproof jacket made from old firefighter suits

Made with everything from plant waste and discarded firefighter suits, to recycled brass and polyester, the Garbage Jacket is a soft, fireproof jacket that reimagines garbage at the very centre of the supply chain, not the bit at the end that no-one wants to look at.

Inspired by… Rambo

40 years ago Sylvester Stallone was freezing his butt off during a bitter Canadian winter on the set of Rambo First Blood. So when he spotted a derelict truck with a piece of rotting canvas stuck underneath it, he yanked it out, cut a hole in it with his knife, pulled it over his head to keep himself warm, and accidentally created one of the most iconic outfits in cinema history. It shows how easily our perception of what is and isn’t garbage can be altered.

Built from one of the toughest materials in the trash

While the Garbage Jacket takes a lot more crafting than one determined dude with a knife, the principles behind it are the same – just because someone else has thrown something away, it doesn’t mean it can’t be used for something else. Following in his footsteps, our Garbage Jacket is made with one of the toughest and most challenging materials in the trash. It’s called meta-aramid, and we get it from old firefighter suits.
Landfill can become a source of raw materials

Every material on Earth can end up in a garbage dump. There aren’t any real limits or restrictions. So you’ll find billions of tons of nylon and polyester from normal clothes which can take up to 200 years to decompose. Around 100 billion new pieces of clothing are made each year. And by 2050 that number is likely to double. At the same time over 150 tons of clothing are dumped in landfill every minute.

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The Garbage Jacket reimagines garbage at the very centre of the supply chain, not the bit at the end that no-one wants to look at.

70% of the material is from firefighter suits

Firefighter suits are typically built out from meta-aramid which is highly flame resistant, doesn’t melt and has powerful thermal resistance. Its properties aren’t reserved just for firefighters either. Make a list of some of the most extreme and demanding jobs in the world, from astronauts and F1 drivers to military pilots and tank operators, and you’ll find them wearing clothing built from meta-aramid.

Sourced from 500 tonnes of firefighter gear

The problem with aramid fibres is that the exact properties which make them incredibly useful are the same properties which make them extremely hard to get rid of. They won’t decompose for hundreds of years, and you can’t incinerate them because they won’t burn, so they simply get dumped in landfill. Every year 500 tonnes of firefighter gear are thrown away in France alone where the Garbage Sweater’s material is constructed.

The material can still repel fire

Even though the meta-aramid fibres were destined for landfill, they still retain enough of their properties to make the Garbage Jacket fire resistant. Hold a flame to the material and it won’t catch fire and the flames won’t spread. It’s why the only other use for this composite material until now has been building protective industrial gloves designed to hold a piece of metal more than 350°C for 12 seconds.

The other 30% is normally used in bulletproof vests

The remaining 30% of the jacket is reinforced with para-aramid. While it’s closely related to meta-aramid, which is a semi-crystalline fibre, it’s spun using a different technique to create a highly crystalline fibre. This high crystallinity results in a material with incredible tensile strength. It’s 5x stronger than steel on a weight for weight basis. And it’s so tough that 8 layers of it can stop a bullet. Which is exactly why it’s used to build bulletproof vests.
Firefighter suits and ballistic vests have a short lifespan

Although meta-aramid and para-aramid can withstand things that normal materials can’t, they’re not invincible. Firefighter gear and ballistic vests are put under massive strain through their day to day use. And when they’re exposed to heat, chemicals and abrasion they gradually degrade. Once they’ve broken down to the point where they’re no longer safe to be worn as protective gear they have to be replaced. It makes the normal lifespan of a firefighter suit or a bulletproof vest just 5 years.
Recycling aramid is hard

While it might not be strong enough or safe enough to work as protective gear anymore, in reality the clothes have only lost a fraction of their original properties. And while some efforts are being made to repurpose aramids for use as insulation, the existing infrastructure to recycle these materials is pretty limited.

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It's not bulletproof yet

Depending on the type, weight and velocity of a bullet, bulletproof vests normally need a minimum of 8 layers of para-aramid to provide sufficient protection. These layers of super strong fibres act like a net, catching the bullet and suppressing its kinetic energy. Bigger, heavier and more powerful bullets sometimes need more than 50 layers of para-aramid to be stopped. So while the Garbage Jacket is made with 30% para-aramid, and blended into a single layer with meta-aramid to add strength, it’s not bulletproof.

How we make fabric out of garbage

All this means that building a Garbage Jacket requires a totally different process to how you would build a regular jacket. It starts by gathering a huge pile of trash made up of old firefighter suits and unwanted fabric scraps that were produced during their original manufacturing processes. This pile is then shredded so that all of the fibres can be pulled out. These fibres are then ground before being blended and spun with para-aramid to make the new material. It’s then washed and brushed to give it a fleece texture.

We use fabric scraps to make the lining

Underneath the hoodie’s outer layer there’s a super smooth inner lining that feels a bit like rugged silk. The material is made entirely from recycled nylon which we get from fabric scraps that were produced during the manufacturing processes of other clothes. Even the thread we use to stitch the whole hoodie together is made from 100% recycled polyester.

Zippers built from plastic bottles

The jacket fastens down the middle with an oversized zipper that’s protected by a storm flap and metal snap fasteners. Either side of the zipper you’ll find two zipped pockets also protected by storm flaps. You’ll also find a small zipped chest pocket built into the lining on the left hand side. All four zippers are made from recycled plastic bottles. And the metal snap fasteners are constructed from 80% recycled brass.

We replace plastic with plant waste

There are recycled polyester drawcords at the back of the hood and at the hem so you can tighten the jacket up in harsh weather. The cord locks look and feel like regular plastic, but they’re actually made from 50% plant waste that comes from grains. Grains like rice grow inside a woody shell – called a husk or a hull – which is often thrown away after harvesting. Rather than let them go to waste we keep the husks and use them to make the cord locks, halving the amount of plastic that would normally be needed.

Where the future of clothing is going

There are three ways to tackle sustainable clothing. You can use advances in material technology to make clothes with a longer life expectancy than the people wearing them. You can go back to using nature to make clothes that require as little energy as possible and leave no trace of their existence at the end of their lives. Or you can start digging into waste streams to use the stuff people have already generated and discarded. With our 100 Year range, our Algae range, and our Garbage range, we’re now tackling all three routes at the same time.