You feel like a young Ethan Hunt: The whir and elegant click as you zip up your jacket that costs more than your first car. Water beads off it like mercury, it weighs less than your soul, and it’s equipped with GPS, satellite imaging, auto-temperature adjustment – in short, more high-tech features than Elon’s SpaceX rockets. As you shoulder a backpack that could comfortably house a family of four, you realize you’re about to conquer the very nature you love so much.
Into the Woods (Where Fairy Tales Go to Die)
You want to put your small fortune of equipment to the test in Germany’s legendary forests. Here, in the dark, lush meadows where the Brothers Grimm spun their gloomy tales, where ancient oaks have stood guard on green moss long before the concept of “athleisure” was even a twinkle in a marketing manager’s eye.
You expect to encounter elves, the magic is tangible, the air heavy with the moist valleys of the ancient Germanic homeland. But the deeper you venture into the fairy tale, the more it becomes a nightmare.
When You Gaze Long into the Abyss, the Abyss Also Gazes into You (And It’s Wearing Your $300 Hiking Boots)
The first signs are subtle. A brown patch where lush green should be. The unsettling crunch of dry moss underfoot. Trees, once majestic, now look more like Berlin Christmas trees in February.
As realization dawns on you, it hits with all the subtlety of an avalanche. The forest, this ancient giant that has seen countless stories unfold beneath its canopy, is dying. And the culprit? Well, it’s staring back at us from our own reflection in the shimmering surface of a suspiciously gasoline-like forest stream.
Plot twist: We are the wolf in this fairy tale.
The forests, the mountains, the seas. Almost every biotope worldwide that you can explore with your fancy outdoor equipment is currently dying – partly because of your fancy outdoor equipment: Antje von Dewitz (you’ll learn who she is later) says: “The textile industry causes more emissions worldwide than global aviation and shipping, and accounts for at least 5% of global freshwater consumption.” (Suston Magazine). Of this, about 5% comes from outdoor outfitters.
All that equipment we’re so proud of? The stuff that helps us “connect with nature”? That tent that could withstand the apocalypse? It will still be intact long after the last tree has crumbled in the heat of a summer forest fire. The water-repellent coating on your pants? About as environmentally friendly as an oil tanker accident in a coral reef.
The good news: Thanks to the many nature lovers and their Instagram fairy tales of adventures in untouched landscapes, the outdoor industry is currently growing mightily: from about 70 billion in 2023 to an expected 129 billion US dollars by 2032.
Your Ultimate Outdoor Existential Crisis
The cruel joke is that our attempts to safely experience nature are contributing to its death. It’s like finding out that sunscreen causes skin cancer or that your therapist is the source of all your neuroses.
So, what’s a conscientious outdoor enthusiast to do? Give up our Gore-Tex and embrace a future of soggy organic cotton misery? Fashion loincloths from fallen leaves and hope for the best?
Is the only way backward? Is abstinence the only option?
Enter: German Engineers
There is another way: Outdoor clothing that looks like yours but apparently wasn’t forged in the fires of environmental doom. An example? The brand Vaude. (Yes, pronounced similar to „VW“ in proper German, just with less CO2 emissions).
Not all outdoor companies are content with simply greenwashing their products and leaving it at that. Some, like Vaude, are actually trying to solve the problem. Novel concept, isn’t it? Remember Antje from the paragraph above? She is Vaude’s CEO. And she is our real outdoor hero. She says: “If you go this way, you need to do it fully, otherwise people don’t go with you. They always ask, is it greenwashing? Or, if you have taken this step, why not this one? So the only way was to do it with total conviction so that people believe it from the outside.” (Family Capital).
Vaude: Difficult Brand Name, But Saving the World
Better believe what Antje says. Here are the facts about Vaude:
Circular Design: By 2024, VAUDE wants 90% of their product range to be made from recycled or bio-based materials. But they’re not stopping there. They’re designing equipment that can be completely disassembled and recycled at the end of its life. Your old boots could become your new tent, which is either brilliant or the beginning of a very strange identity crisis for your gear.
Material Innovation: These people are the mad scientists of the outdoor world. Insulation for jackets made from recycled coffee grounds? Check. Materials for backpacks from ocean plastic? Of course. Next, they’ll probably figure out how to make sleeping bags from broken dreams and lost socks.
Fair Production and Shared Ownership: Antje von Dewitz, Vaude’s CEO, advocates for shared ownership and fair manufacturing. Imagine borrowing a tent from your neighbor that was fairly made to begin with, instead of buying one that’s produced in poor conditions.
Radical Transparency: They’ve developed the Green Shape label, which tells you exactly how much (or how little) you’re damaging the planet with your purchase. It’s like a nutrition label, but for Earth’s health instead of your waistline.
A few more words from Antje about her mission:
“Our Green Shape label, which over 80% of Vaude apparel products already meet. Green Shape products are manufactured fairly in audited production facilities, have a high level of material efficiency, and are designed to be as easy to repair and recycle as possible.” (ISPO.com).
A Glimmer of Hope in a Sea of Petrochemicals
By the way, Vaude isn’t alone on this mission to unfuck the outdoor industry. There is hope. And there is a future. A whole armada of companies is joining the fight, each with its own superpower:
Patagonia, the old hand of environmentally conscious outdoor gear, takes it to the extreme with its “Worn Wear” program. They repair and sell used clothing, challenging the “buy new” mentality. (“Hey, your old jacket isn’t worthless – it just has character!”)
Cotopaxi, the colorful rebel among outdoor brands, turns trash into fashion. They use leftover materials to conjure up brightly colored, functional equipment.
Icebreaker goes a step further and makes its entire supply chain as transparent as a mountain lake (one without microplastics). You can trace each individual garment from the farm to the finished product.
It’s like watching a very special, very fleece-heavy version of the Avengers come together. Each brings their unique abilities to fight the common enemy: our excessive consumption and its effects on the environment.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Let’s not kid ourselves – we’re not out of the woods yet. There are still Everest-sized problems to solve. Recycling mixed materials is about as straightforward as explaining the plot of “Inception” to a 6-year-old. And changing consumer behavior? Well…
But for the first time since we realized that our outdoor hobby is Mother Nature’s death by a thousand cuts, we have a glimmer of hope. And it doesn’t involve giving up our equipment and embracing a future of perpetual dampness and blisters.
The next time you gear up for an adventure, ask yourself: Will this jacket make me look like a rugged outdoor model and help save the world? Or is it just another step in our collective march towards environmental Armageddon?
If there’s a chance to change the textile industry towards sustainability, it’s in the niche of outdoor outfitters. Because here, the goal of the customers is actually to experience unspoiled, healthy nature – even in the future. If we succeed together in turning this sector around, it might be the push that the entire industry needs to finally get moving.
The choice, dear reader, is yours. Choose wisely, because contrary to popular belief: nature is watching you. And it is quite unforgiving.
Antje von Dewitz on LinkedIn? Here!
