Durability Research – Call for Worn Out Waterproof Jackets!

Ensuring long apparel lifecycles is one of the most effective ways the apparel industry can lessen its environmental impacts on the planet. Durable products are also central to a circular economy. Yet without a commonly accepted measurement of durability, we have no way to fully assess failure modes and appropriate product lifecycle durations.

Sports Tech Research Centre at Mid Sweden University is undertaking a pilot research project to help measure product durability by assessing why functional jackets fail in real use.

The project will look at waterproof and breathable jackets across multiple waterproof technologies in the market, to address both overall durability and specifically function, since this is often overseen in common studies. Participating organisations are asked to provide 1–100 samples of end-of-life (real worn) waterproof, breathable jackets. The research institute will collect and anonymize the jackets prior to testing, and seek a breadth of technologies, performances, weights, types of membranes, DWRs, constructions etc. from both professional and consumer end uses to generate reliable, and representative data.

Mid Sweden University encourages end-user organisations and public procurers to participate in this collaborative, multi-stakeholder project, to ensure relevance of the method across professional user groups.

For questions, please contact Dr. Judith Waller, senior researcher at Sports Tech Research Centre, judith.waller@miun.se.