Many commercially available raincoats contain PFAS—'forever chemicals.' Manufacturers are working to develop new, PFAS-free materials
When Greenpeace contacted Fjallraven in 2012 about finding forever chemicals in its products, the outdoor apparel company had, as far as its executives knew, already stopped using PFAS in those items. “I said show me your test results, and I went to the Greenpeace headquarters in Germany,” says Aiko Bode, operating sustainability director at Fjallraven. The activists were right. “Sh*t, something must have happened,” Bode recalls.
Cotopaxi, a Salt Lake City-based outdoor apparel brand, makes gear that includes bags, hats and jackets — but has stayed away from producing high-performance rain gear because of high PFAS chemical content. Even still, an internal testing process identified three Cotopaxi products that contain traces of PFAS, which the company is hoping to phase out this year.
Despite its contamination struggles, Fjallraven did ultimately figure out how to eliminate forever chemicals from the manufacturing process. In fact, the company already had an alternative — a paraffin/beeswax mix — to fall back on for its “,” G-1000, which is made of recycled polyester and organic cotton. The trade-off, Bode says, was settling for products that don’t repel water quite as well as those coated with forever chemicals.
That loss of function is behind some companies’ reluctance to move away from forever chemicals, says Blackburn, who also calls all the added functionality “overengineering.” Blackburn’s research backs this up: An online survey of nearly 1,000 outdoor enthusiasts, most of them from the United Kingdom, found that they essentially only cared about water repellency.
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