The fleece you can buy that started as someone else's water bottle. Recycled-PET fleece takes post-consumer plastic bottles (the #1 PET stream in municipal recycling), washes and shreds them into flake, melts and re-spins the polymer into staple fiber, and knits the fiber into the same brushed-pile fleece structure as virgin Polartec or Synchilla. Patagonia's Synchilla pioneered the recycled-PET fleece category in 1993 (then 80 percent recycled, now mostly 100 percent); Polartec's recycled-content lines (Power Stretch with Hardface Technology Recycled, Power Air 100% recycled) extend the concept to high-performance technical fleece. The fabric is dimensionally and functionally identical to virgin-PET fleece — same hand, same insulation, same drape — at a substantially lower carbon footprint (rPET has 30-50 percent the embodied carbon of virgin PET). The model for closed-loop synthetic textiles. Buy from Patagonia Garment Recycling (used Patagonia products are the input stream for new ones), Polartec-licensed brands (Marmot, Mountain Hardwear, REI Co-op).
Knit polyester fleece, polyester source 100 percent post-consumer recycled PET (PCR-PET) from municipal bottle-recycling streams. Manufacturing flow: collected PET bottles → washing / contaminant removal → flake (3-12 mm) → melt-extrusion → staple fiber (typical 1-3 dtex per filament, 38mm staple length) → carding → spinning → circular knitting in fleece structures (single-jersey with brushed pile face, or double-faced with brushed pile both sides). Fleece weights 100-300 g/m² depending on grade; Polartec 100 weight is the lighter mid-layer canon, Polartec 200 weight (separate entry — see Polartec 200 fleece) is the warmer mid-layer canon. Fiber tensile strength 35-45 cN/tex (slightly lower than virgin PET at the same denier — recycled fiber has shorter chain length from each thermal cycle, contributing to slight strength reduction). Pilling: rPET fleece pills equivalently to virgin fleece — the surface character is from the brushing not from the polymer source. Insulation value (clo) equivalent to virgin PET fleece at same weight. Microplastic shedding is the legitimate concern with all polyester-fiber laundering — the Guppyfriend bag and washing-machine in-line filters are the consumer-tier mitigation. Resin identification code 1 (PET) — closed-loop recycling theoretically possible (rPET fleece → flake → new rPET fleece), in practice limited by fiber-length degradation each cycle.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere fibrous finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: fibrous albedo #48586a metallic 0.00 roughness 0.70 ior 1.45 transmission 0.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.70 anisotropic 0.50
{
"albedo": "#48586a",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.7,
"ior": 1.45,
"transmission": 0.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.7,
"anisotropic": 0.5
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Recycled-PET Fleece (rPET, Polartec Power Air 100% Recycled) · finish: fibrous
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_recycled_pet_fleece")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.0648, 0.0976, 0.1441, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.700
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.450
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.700
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.500
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Recycled-PET Fleece (rPET, Polartec Power Air 100% Recycled) · finish: fibrous
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_recycled_pet_fleece", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (72, 88, 106)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.700)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.450)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Recycled-PET Fleece (rPET, Polartec Power Air 100% Recycled) \u00b7 finish: fibrous",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.0648,
"g": 0.0976,
"b": 0.1441
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.7,
"ior": 1.45,
"opacity": 1.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.5,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_recycled_pet_fleece",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.0648,
0.0976,
0.1441,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.7
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_ior": {
"ior": 1.45
},
"KHR_materials_sheen": {
"sheenColorFactor": [
1.0,
1.0,
1.0
],
"sheenRoughnessFactor": 0.7
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Recycled-PET Fleece (rPET, Polartec Power Air 100% Recycled) · finish: fibrous
def Material "mat_recycled_pet_fleece" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_recycled_pet_fleece/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.0648, 0.0976, 0.1441)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.700
float inputs:ior = 1.450
float inputs:opacity = 1.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
Polartec / Patagonia recycled-PET fleece technical literature; Ellen MacArthur Foundation textile-microplastic reports.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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