Patagonia wants to transform the 'filthy denim' industry with sustainable jeans

Patagonia is hoping to overhaul the denim industry with a new line of jeans created using environmentally friendly dyes.

The activewear label unveiled its new denim collection earlier this week, announcing plans to clean up "the filthy business of conventional denim" by raising the bar for environmental and human rights practices.

The collection uses innovative, environmentally friendlier dye, Fair Trade Certified sewing practices, and 100% organic cotton grown without pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers.

"Traditional denim is a filthy business," says Helena Barbour, Patagonia's Business Unit Director, Sportswear. "That drove us to change the way our jeans are made. We wanted to find an alternative solution to using the standard indigo dyeing methods we once employed to create denim. It took several years of research, innovation, trial and error, but the result is a new path for denim. We're hopeful other manufacturers will follow suit and help us change the denim industry."

Denim production often involves the use of dangerous chemicals, while dying it produces millions of gallons of wastewater, and jeans may be sewn in factories where workers may not be treated fairly. Patagonia's new dyeing and manufacturing process uses dyestuffs that bond more easily to cotton, minimizing the resource-intensive and environmentally destructive indigo dyeing, rinsing and garment washing process used to create traditional denim. The new collection will see the label use 84 percent less water, 30 percent less energy and emit 25 percent less CO2 than conventional synthetic indigo denim dyeing processes.

The Fall 2015 Patagonia Denim collection includes three men's and three women's jeans that are rugged, stylish, performance-driven and up for anything, whether it's bouldering in the Buttermilks or dining out in New York City.

Patagonia isn't the only brand to shape up its denimwear for the better -- this month Level 99 teased its sustainable Autumn/Winter 2015 ‘Forever' denim microcollections, which use fewer environmental resources and put an emphasis on green initiatives.