Uusi puu – The New Wood Project shows what wood can do. The project promotes wood-based innovations and provides information about them.
UPM collaborated with outerwear manufacturer Vaude to develop a fleece fabric in which crude oil is replaced with wood biomass.
The fashion and footwear industries urgently need to find more raw materials that conform to the principles of sustainable development. About 60 percent of all materials used in the fashion industry are made of fossil-based polymers.
In particular, synthetic polymers are needed in high-performance materials, such as those used in sports- and outerwear.
At the end of the year 2023, UPM Biochemicals and the outerwear manufacturer Vaude launched the world’s first partially bio-based fleece jacket.
The resin used to produce the polyester for fleece fabrics normally contains 30 percent monoethylene glycol (MEG), conventionally made out of crude oil. UPM and Vaude use a process in which this ingredient is completely replaced by bio monoethylene glycol (BioMEG). The material is marketed under the brand name UPM BioPura™. According to UPM, it can be easily used in existing polyester production processes. On the molecular level, it is equivalent to MEG, and can also be recycled in the same way.
UPM and Vaude hope that their fleece jacket will inspire and motivate fashion brands to move from fossil-based materials to bio-based solutions, as this would make an incentive for the textile industry to improve its sustainability.
’We have partnered with UPM as partnerships across the whole value chain are a prerequisite for enhancing sustainable innovations. This initial milestone marks the first step in our journey to create a polyester derived from non-fossil ingredients,’ says René Bethmann, Senior Innovation Manager at Vaude.