When we were developing our swim shorts, the choice of material was the first and most important decision. Everything else, the cut, the construction, the colours, followed from it. Here’s how we ended up with SEAQUAL® yarn and why we haven’t looked elsewhere since.
The Starting Point
We didn’t start by looking for a sustainable material. We started by asking what the right material for a pair of swim shorts actually is.
The functional requirements are specific. It needs to dry quickly, because nobody wants to spend the afternoon in a wet swimsuit. It needs to hold its shape in salt water and chlorine, because both degrade fabric over time. It needs to be lightweight enough to be comfortable in warm weather. And it needs to last, because a pair of swim shorts that falls apart after a season isn’t a quality product regardless of what it’s made from.
Those requirements pointed toward synthetic fibre. Natural fibres, cotton, linen, hemp, don’t perform well as swimwear. They absorb water rather than repelling it, dry slowly, and lose their shape when wet. There’s no practical natural fibre alternative for swimwear that delivers the performance most people expect.
So the question became: which synthetic, and where does it come from?
The Options We Considered
Virgin polyester is the industry default. It’s cheap, widely available, and performs well. It’s also produced from petroleum, contributes to microplastic pollution, and has no connection to any environmental benefit beyond the minimal advantages of synthetic durability over natural fibre alternatives. We ruled it out immediately.
Standard rPET (recycled polyester from plastic bottles) is the most common sustainable swimwear material claim. It’s genuinely better than virgin polyester, using existing plastic rather than new petroleum. Several brands we respect use it. The limitations are that plastic bottles collected through conventional recycling were already within a waste management system, and that the sustainable credentials are relatively easy to claim without rigorous verification of the actual recycled content.
Econyl® is a recycled nylon made primarily from recovered fishing nets and other nylon waste. It’s a credible material with strong environmental credentials, particularly around ghost gear retrieval. We considered it seriously. The reason we didn’t choose it is that nylon and polyester perform differently as swimwear fabrics, and our assessment was that SEAQUAL® polyester delivered better performance characteristics for the specific product we were making.
SEAQUAL® yarn was the choice we kept coming back to for three reasons.
Why SEAQUAL®
The feedstock is genuinely marine. SEAQUAL® is produced from plastic physically recovered from the ocean and coastline environment through the SEAQUAL Initiative’s collection network. That’s a different proposition from recycling plastic that was already captured within a waste system. The material in our swim shorts was in the ocean. Now it isn’t. That’s a direct environmental contribution rather than an indirect one.
The certification is rigorous. SEAQUAL® maintains a verified chain of custody from collection through processing, spinning, and fabric production. Every stage is documented and auditable. When we say our swim shorts are made from recycled ocean plastic, we can demonstrate exactly what that means through the certification documentation rather than making a general claim and hoping no one looks too closely.
The performance is genuinely good. SEAQUAL® yarn produces fabric that is quick drying, soft, durable, and resistant to the UV exposure and salt water contact that degrades cheaper swimwear fabrics. It improves with age rather than degrading. For a product we’re asking people to pay a premium for and wear for multiple seasons, material performance isn’t a secondary consideration.
The combination of genuine environmental provenance, rigorous verification, and strong performance made SEAQUAL® the clear choice. We haven’t found a reason to reconsider.
What We Don’t Claim
It’s worth being clear about what using SEAQUAL® doesn’t mean.
It doesn’t mean our swim shorts are plastic free. They’re made from recycled plastic, which is meaningfully better than virgin plastic but is still a synthetic material that will shed some microfibres during washing.
It doesn’t mean buying a pair of swim shorts solves ocean plastic pollution. The scale of the problem is vastly larger than any consumer product choice can address. What it does mean is that the material in the product was removed from the ocean, and that the commercial demand for SEAQUAL® yarn supports the economic infrastructure that makes collection viable.
It doesn’t mean every aspect of production is without environmental impact. Manufacturing has a footprint. Transport has a footprint. We work to minimise both by manufacturing in the UK rather than shipping finished goods from overseas, but we don’t claim a zero impact product.
What we do claim is that the material is genuinely what we say it is, that the environmental contribution is real rather than theoretical, and that the product is built to last rather than to be replaced next season.
The Broader Philosophy
The reason we’re particular about materials isn’t only environmental. It’s about being able to stand behind what we make.
We’ve built Rolf Skeldon around the principle that if we say something is natural, organic, or sustainably sourced, it actually is. Not approximately. Not in most components. Actually. That standard costs more and takes longer than the alternative, but it means we can describe our products honestly without hedging or qualification.
Choosing SEAQUAL® over cheaper or easier alternatives is part of that same approach. There were less expensive recycled polyester options available. There were options with less rigorous certification that would have been harder to audit. We chose the one we could stand behind completely.
Our men’s SEAQUAL® recycled swim shorts are made in Plymouth, UK. Five colours, one material, no shortcuts.
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