For most people, the word fleece is perceived as a separate material. But this will not be right. We at Tufte will try to clarify that. Fleece is a collective term for many different fabrics with a furry fabric surface, and can be made far more sustainably than using polyester.

For many years, the polyester fleece jumper has been a popular garment, and most people have one lying around at home or in the cabin. The "fleece jumper" has become a term of its own, and this synthetic jumper that most of us think of is cheap, practical, warm, light and soft. But to extract polyester, a chemical mixture of two petroleum fibers is used which is melted into a thick syrup, before this hardens and is spun into thread. This is not particularly environmentally friendly, and the process releases a lot of substances that pollute nature.

Sometimes bottles and other plastics are recycled and turned into thread, which in turn becomes clothing and fleece material. This is better than conventional polyester, and manufacturers say that for every meter of recycled polyester material, 8 plastic bottles are kept out of landfill. It is good! But since the material is made from plastic, it still sprinkles microplastics during use and especially when washing in the washing machine. This plastic ends up in nature and contributes to a constant accumulation of plastic in the sea. Certain sources estimate an annual discharge of approx. 600 tonnes of microplastics in the sea via the washing of synthetic textiles in Norway alone. And some items of clothing, polyester fleece included, can emit as many as 1,900 different plastic fibers when washed.