What about your old down products?

May 5, 2024 mountaingroup

You probably have one: a sleeping bag, a down jacket, or maybe your duvet or pillow is filled with down. If not, you've certainly come across a feather-filled item at some point. Down has been used as insulating filler for generations, keeping people warm at night and explorers alive in the coldest conditions.

But what happens to all this once you're done with it? Where does it go?

We have been working with down from the very beginning. The steps leading to Rab's attic, where he was sewing his first sleeping bags, were speckled with white and grey from down clusters. We gradually added technical down jackets to our range and eventually mastered down insulation.

What is down?

Down is the fine layer of feathers that sits beneath a bird's hard outer feathers. These feathers are closest to the bird's body, are extremely light, and are a very effective means of trapping air.

Trapping air beneath a jacket or in a sleeping bag creates an incredibly effective thermal barrier, keeping us warm while in the mountains.

That is why our most technical insulation products are filled with down.

Another important benefit of down is that it is extremely compressible, allowing alpinists and mountaineers to store their jackets during the day without taking up a lot of space in their backpacks, and to put them on when the temperature drops.

Down is a waste product.

Much of our down comes from the food industry as a by-product of meat production. We only use duck and goose down in our products, and since 2016, all our virgin down has been certified by the Responsible Down Standard, guaranteeing the welfare of the birds.

Goose down tends to be of higher quality, offering the best warmth-to-weight ratio, and we use it in our top products. It packs more compactly, which is a big advantage when traveling fast and light.

Duck down clusters are smaller and not as warm in relation to weight, making them ideal for our more general use, everyday jackets, such as our classic Kinder Smock.

However, down is not a single-use material.

Down can be reused again and again, and recycled into new products once its initial function has ended.

We started using recycled down in 2019 in our Horizon Down Hoody. These days, we work with the team behind PURE recycled in an effort to close the loop. You can find PURE recycled in our iconic Microlight jacket and Axion Pro jackets.

In fact, in 2020 we saved 21,500 kilograms of down from going to landfill by using PURE recycled down.

Despite being such a good material to use and reuse, there are very few systems in place to recycle it. It has taken us a long time to find a supplier that can guarantee the high-quality down we need to deliver the performance you expect from our gear.

So... where do all the old kilos of down go?
Sadly, the answer is to landfill. But it doesn't have to be that way.

We are piloting a take-back scheme in the UK, trying to close the loop.

We've built a down collection site at Rab's UK headquarters in Alfreton, Derbyshire. Here we collect spent items like down duvets, pillows, jackets, sleeping bags and similar variants, before giving this valuable material a new lease of life.

How do we recycle?

We are first piloting the scheme to smooth out the processes. But we have big plans to start expanding the scheme to all our distributors, including Mountain Group.

1. PURE® recycled down is sourced from post-consumer waste items such as duvets, pillows and other down products.

2. Sorted and classified in Italy and then delivered to us, PURE® recycled down is currently the only down recycling company certified by the Global Recycling Standard.