Samsara Eco and Lululemon decided to create a partnership and from this partnership, the world’s first enzymatically recycled polyamide 66 (PA66) apparel was created. This apparel has been available on the market since February of 2024.

Lululemon is an athletic apparel brand and Samsara Eco is an Australian start-up company. The apparel was created through Samsara Eco developing an enzymatically recycled polyester. This polyester was then used by Lululemon and crafted into samples of the company’s limited edition Packable Anorak jacket. Lululemon manufactured the jacket through a variety of different materials, such as mixed plastic waste, some of Lululemon's end-of-life stage apparel and finally, converted carbon emissions.

Samsara Eco was able to create this polyester in a process that utilised low-temperature deploymerisation and also used a specific combination of biophysics, chemistry, computer science and biology. All of these combined, resulted in the generation of plastic-eating enzymes, which are optimised to efficiently and effectively recycle PET, polyester and nylon 66 at scale. Furthermore, the process is capable of managing a wide variety of fabric, which could be blended or could be created through a mixed bale feedstock. This kind of feedstock could include poly/cotton and nylon/elastane blends or carpet fibres, zip ties or even airbags.

This excellent creation is a significant breakthrough and a huge step forward for the clothing and material industry, as there is currently a large switch in material choice occurring. Whilst polyester currently represents an estimated 80% of the synthetic fibre market, new requirements are being created and that means that this statistic will soon change. Therefore, making changes to the material that clothes are made out of, is an excellent and necessary adjustment. This is shown within the plastics industry, which has recently decided that when it comes to textiles, the industry will be moving forwards into a more circular economy.

Vice president, raw materials innovation at Lululemon, Yogendra Dandapure, commented, “Our vision is to scale these technologies to address textile waste across our entire supply chain. This capsule product is a first step along this journey, helping us test and learn as we continue to advance circularity, which signals exciting possibilities for all industries looking to shift to more circular models.”