Over the past few years PULSAR® has developed their knowledge and skillset to enable them to evaluate areas within the business which can be improved, resulting in a lesser impact on our environment. Although PULSAR® has already made some positive steps towards being a greener business, they are still at the beginning of their journey, a journey which will continue to adapt and evolve as the world around us does so. As climate change impacts the world around us, as a market leading brand, PULSAR® want to be part of the solution, not the problem. Their mission is to make all areas within the business as sustainable as possible as the only future is a sustainable future. And they go by the following moto, Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
To start their journey, PULSAR® recently introduced their first ever Environmentally Responsible garment, a polo shirt, incorporating 45% GRS recycled polyester made from post-consumer waste and 55% BCI cotton, finished in a premium pique knit. The Global Recycled Standard (GRS) is a voluntary product standard for tracking and verifying the content of recycled materials in a final product. All PULSAR® Life garments incorporate GRS accredited fabrics ensuring responsible sourcing and production throughout the PULSAR® Life collection. PULSAR® Life garments only use BCI Cotton (Better Cotton Initiative) in the garments which is the largest cotton sustainability programme in the world, ensuring a sustainable and better future for all.
Creating the new PULSAR® Life range was about addressing how they start designing products, working from a more circular viewpoint with the end of life in mind, thinking about the life span of a garment
When nominating fabrics which can achieve the maximum amount of wash cycles along with selecting fabrics that have a lower imprint on the environment by using recycled and organic fibres. This then lead them to look further into what kind of treatments were being used on their goods and ensuring they were nominating Bluesign® approved ones which fell inline with their new direction of being more responsible in their development of goods. This was the first step in a new direction for PULSAR® in their journey to designing and producing products in a more circular and responsible direction that ensures they are considering the environmental impact at all times and continuing their working methods of being socially and ethically responsible manufacturers.
PULSAR® wanted to design a polo shirt that was not only made out of responsible materials but also designed to last longer. The PULSAR® Life polo shirts, incorporate a DuPont Silvadur anti-bacterial treatment, reducing bad odours within the garment, this helps to reduce the need to wash the garment when not dirty. This has a number of benefits including extending the life even further whilst at the same time, reduces energy, water consumption and detergent usage – helping protect our environment.
They have pushed the life expectancy by using materials and components which can last up to 50 domestic washes, 10 times the requirement of the standard for a pass. This helps promote a longer life span of the garment, which in theory means there is a reduction in demand in garments being manufactured over the period of time, reducing pollution in production and shipping.
Alongside the responsible elements of these polo shirts and the ability to protect our environment, the polo shirts also include safety features which help protect the wearers, such as an Ultraviolet Protection Factor rating of 40+, offering maximum protection against the dangers of harmful UV rays and the certification to the hi visibility standard, EN ISO:20471.
They believe the PULSAR® Life polo shirts are the first in the market to use post-consumer textile waste rather than plastic bottles. Yes, the plastic bottle has become quite synonymous with sustainable fabrics, however the bottle industry needs waste bottles to make more bottles. If we all switch to plastic bottles to make textiles, it means the bottle companies need new bottles to be produced for what they need, which is sort of defeating the object. They will always where possible utilise textile waste to produce more textiles, in order to have that full circular system for products in the industry.
Looking into the future, they will begin their journey to becoming GRS accredited, working with GRS nominated materials/fabrics and suppliers for their products. It will also see them align themselves with Textiles 2030, so they can begin to look into their range of products and measure their impact on the environment. Textiles 2030 is WRAP’s award-winning initiative, harnessing the knowledge and expertise of UK leaders in sustainability to accelerate the UK fashion and textiles industry towards a circular approach.
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