Recycled materials

Old jeans

Finlayson gives your old jeans a new life in Old Jeans towels. Approximately 40 per cent of the product is recycled material. The rest of an Old Jeans product consists of TENCEL™ fibre (40%) and virgin cotton (20%) to ensure a durable structure.

According to our calculation, manufacturing a hand towel or a bath towel from old jeans (including the material and process) saves nearly 850 or over 2,500 litres of water, respectively, compared with similar products made of virgin cotton. Water is also saved because the colour of the product is the same as that of the original material and no redyeing is needed.

In 2019, Finlayson's jeans towels have saved over 21 million liters of water – that makes more than eight Olympic swimming pools. That really is a lot.

Retired sheets

People’s closets are full of old sheets and towels that have fully served their purpose but deserve a new life. These old textiles brought to our stores are taken to the Pohjanmaa region in Western Finland to be woven into lovely rag products, such as rugs and cushions. Recycling reduces the amount of textile waste, and less textile material ends up being burned. In 2018, we received approximately 100,000 kilograms of good recyclable textiles.

Textile cutting waste

In textile industry, cutting waste cannot be avoided, but how could it be utilised? In autumn 2017, we introduced the soft and warm Reno flannel duvet covers, made from cutting waste received from our partner factory in Portugal.

Reno flannel contains six per cent of virgin cotton and the remaining 94 per cent is recycled fibre from different natural and synthetic materials. The recycled fibre mixture may also include luxury fibres, such as cashmere and silk.

Used PET plastic bottles

Finding a material as ecological as possible with the highest possible quality was not easy. Nevertheless, we did not want to make pillows and duvets in the same way as many others.

The filling material of our duvets and pillows is 100 per cent recycled polyester fibre made from recycled PET bottles. It takes slightly under twenty recycled plastic bottles to fill a new Finlayson pillow, and the filling of a duvet takes about thirty bottles.

In addition, we use recycled polyester fibre from plastic bottles for our Siperia carpets. These carpets are hand-made in India of 100 per cent recycled material. PET plastic bottles are collected from local shopping centres and restaurants, crushed and spun into polyester yarn.

Running your hand over these carpets you would never believe that a material that looks and feels so soft could be made of plastic bottles – but it is true! You cannot tell the difference to the quality of virgin fibre. However, from the sustainability perspective, we think that the recycled product is superior.

Approximately 55–60 recycled plastic bottles are used for the smallest Siperia rug (90x150 cm), while a runner (90x250) takes about 80–85 and the largest carpet (140x200 cm) about 105–110 bottles.

Surplus plastic from the plastic industry

We do not want to bring any more unnecessary plastic material into the world. Therefore, we make clothes pegs of surplus material from the plastic industry.

Plastic is an environmental problem of a global scale. Therefore, it is important for us to find recycling solutions for the existing plastic waste. Durable clothes pegs made of recycled plastic are designed and manufactured in Finland, at Kalasatama in Helsinki.