Ironbull's blog

OK, so I know that I'm not the only one here with a collection of rarely appropriate attire squirreled away in my bottom drawer.

Ahh.... spandex. Proof that god loves us and wants us to wrestle and look fierce in the ring, hot on the beach and sleek in the pool.

Spandex was invented by scientists at DuPont in 1959 as a lighter, more breathable alternative to rubber. In 1972, Speedo sold their first pair of spandex swimming trunks and I, for one, was at the sports shop next day buying my way into a very happy life of glutes, bulges and fine lines that accentuate the male body in a most satisfactory manner.

However, spandex is a petroleum-based material that also releases microplastics into the water supply. As a species we buy a lot of it. Just ask the fish. Or the marketing organisations. Bummer. My lifelong pleasure is fucking up the planet.

I bought some wrestling trunks from elucha.com recently. The sticker on the front of the package revealed a journey through 5 countries and three continents. That's some carbon footprint. Then I discovered that Spandex is a very difficult material to recycle. The synthetic fibers are too short for mechanical processes to sort, and no effective chemical methods yet exist to recover the used material (no, not even baby oil). Some of the larger swimwear manufacturers have tried to go green so that the material doesn't come from fossil fuels and can be recycled, but I strongly suspect that only the big names such as Adidas and Speedo are on that bandwagon. Even they have not found an effective solution; their recycled swimwear feels like wearing a shopping bag with leg holes - eugh. The hard and bulging truth is that there’s no way to strip off one pair of skintight sweaty trunks and recycle them into another. Besides, recycled spandex releases microplastics into the water supply just like brand new spandex. So your worn-out low cut shiny singlet is typically going to wind up in landfill. Or in the ocean.

The big firms are still working on this. Lycra clothing is big business. The industry has to get its house in order or regulations will be required. We only have to look at the news to see how clear and present the danger is. What seems certain is that the day of lycra is coming to an end as it must. I will miss it.

...............

Post script. It's the year 4021. An archaeoligist digs up an ancient mound on the outskirts of what was once London. A year later, an exhibition of early 21st century artifacts opens to the public. A silver lycra wrestling singlet with a slight tear on the left leg hangs in a glass case, gleaming in the gloom of the museum. A small voice asks "wtf?"

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Last edited on 8/10/2021 1:53 PM by Ironbull; 31 comment(s)
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