Recycled Cotton is therefore a low impact material.

https://everywhereapparel.com/pages/sustainability

"Our recycled cotton apparel uses no water used in fiber production, as well as no chemicals, dyes, or bleaching."

70% of Nudie Jean's organic cotton is sourced from Turkey followed by India it's second largest being certified by Fairtrade. So there are a small amount of channels involved in moving the material.

Nudie Jeans though primarily using organic cotton, the company uses recycled cotton when they can as there practice of not using artificial fertilizers and pesticides allow for NO energy consumption for needed substances.

Instead of the denim being reduced to fiber, Nudie Jeans recycle their denim as is through their internally developed re-use program. To me that means denim can be donated in sections or the pants as a whole can be used by creative consumer seeking to give life to fabrics.

This further validates sustainability and holds the global business accountable. In order to challenge companies who CLAIM to be eco-friendly, the may be urged for certification so that there may be investigated truth.

"1. The cotton must be blended with other fibers to be made into new yarn for strength and durability, and therefore cannot continuously be recycled.

2.The content of recycled cotton will depend on the end-use application. Any amount of recycled product will impact the yarn and fabric properties such as evenness, strength, and uniformity.

3. Recycled yarn cost is generally higher than standard, virgin cotton yarn costs but is consistently of a lower quality.

4. Testing instruments are made for ginned, virgin cotton.

Sometimes, testing results can be skewed due to the difference in fiber packing and orientation which makes the blends difficult to accurately represent on labels.

5. The risk of contamination by other fibers is much higher for recycled cotton. Stitching, sewing thread, small amounts of spandex should all be taken into account when establishing the recycled supply chain."

This helps me understand why Nudie Jeans stated that they used recycled cotton "as much as we can". The material has depleted life expectancy because it is essentially an old crop being stress repeatedly through human machinery. But in a way I think it is appropriate to lay the remains to rest. Im sure they can be used in more resourceful ways other than apparel like helping to start weak fires