Athletic brand debuts clothing line designed to disappear in your backyard: 'All of our products make good dirt'

Athletic clothing brand Under Armour unveiled a new line at Milan Design Week in April that boasts a unique eco-friendly feature.

According to Fast Company, Under Armour debuted its "regenerative sportswear collection" in collaboration with Unless Collective. The partners say their new line is biodegradable and compostable as it features footwear and clothing wholly fabricated from plants and plant-based materials.

Eric Liedtke told Fast Company, "All of our products make good dirt." Liedtke is an Unless co-founder and Under Armour's executive vice president of brand strategy.

Most mass-produced clothing is made using plastic and other synthetic materials, which don't break down well and pose the risk of leaching toxic chemicals into water and soil systems. With the explosion of cheaply made "fast fashion" in recent years, more and more clothing is ending up in landfills.

Since such pieces are so shoddily made, they tend to fall apart at a faster rate. Consumers, in turn, buy fast fashion in higher quantities. This drives increased production and shipping all around the world, contributing to the release of heat-trapping pollution and warming planet Earth.

While Liedtke says the new pieces from Under Armour and Unless were constructed to be sturdy and long-lasting when worn, they break down in a matter of weeks inside an industrial composter. They can even be buried in your backyard, according to Fast Company, and added to your compost pile for similar results.

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Companies are looking for innovative ways to create more natural, eco-friendly products, in and outside of the textile world. A Finnish company has created a biodegradable plastic that could help replace traditional plastic packaging, while a Swiss company has made a breakthrough in biodegradable batteries made from mushrooms. Another company has introduced edible packets made from seaweed that can hold drinks, sauces, and other liquids.

In the collection from Under Armour and Unless, buttons are made from tagua — a nut sometimes referred to as "vegetable ivory" — while shoe liners and soles combine coconut husks and natural rubber latex.

The brands hope other companies will be inspired by their line to design more products using natural, biodegradable materials with fewer environmental impacts than typical textiles.

"The future is regenerative," Liedtke told Fast Company. "The question now is scaling it, and telling people about it."