Golden, CO — Outdoor bag and pack maker Mountainsmith has added recycled content to almost 40 percent of its products over the past five years, and with the right circumstances, it could double that amount in the coming years.

Thirty of the company's 76 bag styles are now made with recycled PET from post-consumer plastic bottles. The recycled plastic is used in the bags' exterior fabrics and interior linings.

The company first offered products with recycled content in spring 2006. Some of Mountainsmith's products have contained recycled material in the webbing, mesh and foam, but the company no longer makes those parts with recycled content, said Mountainsmith lead designer Luke Boldman, because they became too cost-prohibitive.

The recycled plastic comes from bottles collected in Japan, Taiwan and China. Mountainsmith's textile supplier, HoYu Textile Co. Ltd., of Taiwan, helped the company create its ReDura 100-percent recycled PET fabrics and yarn in 2004 and 2005.

"We developed these recycled fabrics...because of the recognition of an impending market opportunity in offering the outdoor sporting goods consumer a sustainable and eco-friendly option for their gear," Boldman said. "The outdoor market seemed to be the most responsive to this shift in eco-friendly fabrics quite simply because their pursuits and passions resided within the outdoors."

Mountainsmith has found that the recycled fabrics have 12-18 percent lower abrasion resistance and tear strength than virgin materials, so they make up for it by using a heavier weave with the recycled PET.

Boldman doesn't expect Mountainsmith to switch all of its products to recycled content anytime soon due to the cost differences between recycled and virgin fiber and how those would affect the prices of certain products. But, he said, "As the manufacturing and technology improves, demand rises and prices drop for recycled materials, it certainly is feasible to suggest we could offer 70-80 percent of our line in recycled PET within the next five years."