Yoga pants and athliesure are popular. Are they 100 percent plastic?
A few years ago I led an Earth Day workshop at Lululemon’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue. I think it’s a flagship store, anyway.
The main guy leading thing from Lululemon’s side told me how much he loved the company’s culture. He said at the store, despite him working and others shopping, everyone felt like they were part of a community of mutual support.
Since I focus on sustainability, he added that he grew up as a surfer in Australia and was sensitive to ocean plastic. It dawned on him that nearly every product Lululemon sold was plastic and would end up in the ocean for centuries. It would become this:
Since then, yoga pants and athliesure have increased like crazy. A lot of it looks disposable and people probably don’t wear them that many times before throwing them away. I was curious so looked up how much of them were plastic. Here are the results from a web search. The top few articles showed that yoga pants are environmental disasters.
- Your yoga pants are spewing microplastics into the environment
- Investigation finds evidence of PFAS in workout and yoga pants
- New tests find toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in bedding, yoga pants and other textiles
Regarding the second article, as if birth-defect-causing PFAS weren’t enough, they found them in the crotch of the pants: “The testing—done from the crotch area of the pants—was conducted by an EPA-certified lab and flagged any clothing that had more than 10 parts per million (ppm) fluorine.” Where would you less want toxins?
People wore clothing before plastic or any type of pollution. None of it is necessary.
Read my weekly newsletter
On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees