Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic waste end up in our oceans. Some is dumped deliberately. Some washes off beaches and coastlines. Some travels down rivers from inland cities. Once it’s in the water, it breaks down slowly into smaller and smaller fragments, entering the food chain, accumulating in marine life, and eventually making its way back to us.
It’s a problem that’s been building for decades and that most of the fashion industry has ignored entirely, continuing to produce new synthetic fabrics from virgin petroleum while the oceans fill with the plastic consequences of previous production cycles.
SEAQUAL® is one of the more credible attempts to change that relationship.
What SEAQUAL® Actually Is
SEAQUAL® is a certified recycled polyester yarn produced from plastic waste recovered from our oceans and coastlines. The SEAQUAL Initiative coordinates the collection of that waste through a network of fishermen, beach clean volunteers, and coastal communities across Europe and beyond, who gather marine litter and deliver it to processing facilities.
That collected plastic, which includes everything from fishing nets and ropes to bottles and packaging, is sorted, cleaned, and processed into recycled PET fibre. That fibre is then spun into SEAQUAL® yarn, a high performance textile material that can be woven or knitted into fabric for clothing, accessories, and other products.
The result is a material that performs comparably to virgin polyester in terms of strength, durability, and technical properties, while carrying a significantly lower environmental footprint.
The Environmental Numbers
The difference between producing SEAQUAL® yarn and producing conventional virgin polyester is measurable and independently verified:
37% lower CO₂ emissions during production. Recycling existing plastic requires considerably less energy than extracting and processing petroleum into new synthetic fibre.
34% less water consumption. Conventional polyester production is water intensive at multiple stages. Recycled alternatives reduce that demand significantly.
40% less energy use overall. The combined effect of avoiding petroleum extraction, reducing processing requirements, and using recycled feedstock rather than virgin material.
These aren’t marketing estimates. They’re figures verified through life cycle analysis by independent bodies and backed by the SEAQUAL Initiative’s certification process.
Every SEAQUAL® product also carries Oeko-Tex® certification, confirming it’s free from harmful substances and safe for skin contact.
How the Collection Works
The SEAQUAL Initiative works primarily with fishing communities, who collect marine litter as part of their regular activity at sea. Fishermen retrieve plastic waste in their nets alongside their catch and deliver it to collection points rather than discarding it back into the water.
This model does two things simultaneously. It removes existing plastic from the ocean and coastline environment. And it creates an economic incentive for coastal communities to participate in collection, because the recovered material has commercial value as a recycled raw material rather than being treated purely as waste.
The collected plastic is sorted by type and colour, shredded, and converted into recycled PET chips. Those chips are melted and extruded into fibre, which is then spun into yarn. The yarn is certified at each stage of this process to maintain traceability from ocean collection to finished textile.
What Makes it Different from Other Recycled Polyester
Recycled polyester is not a new concept. Brands have been producing rPET fabric from recycled plastic bottles for years, and it’s become a standard claim in sustainable fashion marketing.
SEAQUAL® is different in two important ways.
First, the feedstock. Standard rPET is made from post-consumer plastic bottles collected through conventional recycling schemes. That’s a reasonable use of recycled material, but it’s not the same as removing plastic from the ocean environment. Plastic bottles in a recycling bin were already captured within a waste management system. Marine plastic was not, and without intervention it would continue to degrade in the ocean indefinitely.
Second, the traceability. SEAQUAL® maintains a verified chain of custody from the point of collection to the finished product. Brands using SEAQUAL® yarn can demonstrate that a specific proportion of the material in their products came from recovered marine plastic rather than simply claiming recycled content without substantiation.
That traceability matters because it’s what separates a genuine contribution to ocean clean up from a marketing claim.
Why We Use It
When we were developing our swim shorts, recycled ocean plastic was the obvious material choice. Swim shorts end up in the ocean. Making them from material recovered from the ocean closes a loop that feels both logical and meaningful.
But the choice wasn’t just symbolic. SEAQUAL® yarn performs exceptionally well as a swimwear fabric. It’s quick drying, soft, durable, and maintains its shape and colour through extended use in salt water, chlorine, and sunlight. It happens to be the right material for the product as well as the right material for the planet.
Our men’s recycled swim shorts are made from 70% SEAQUAL® yarn recovered from ocean waste and 30% rPET from recycled plastic bottles, made in Plymouth, UK. Every purchase directly supports the SEAQUAL Initiative’s ongoing work to recover plastic from our seas.
The Bigger Picture
SEAQUAL® is not a solution to ocean plastic pollution. The scale of the problem is too large for any single material or initiative to solve alone. But it represents something important, a model for turning an environmental problem into a resource, for creating economic incentives aligned with environmental outcomes, and for making the connection between what we consume and what we leave behind in the natural world more visible and more direct.
For a brand making swimwear, using the ocean itself as a material source is the most honest relationship with that environment we can think of.
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