Aware of the environmental impact of neoprene, for over a decade Soöruz has been looking to reduce its environmental footprint by developing new materials from renewable and recyclable material.
Soöruz wetsuits with bamboo and recycled polyester (2013), Yulex (2013) and Naturalprene (2016) have been major innovations. They comforted us with the possibility of making more sustainable wetsuits with higher performance. Many wetsuits focus on an eco-friendlier material: the limestone, is a type of fossil coming from quarry. It limits the use of petrochemical materials, but it requires a very energy intensive and non-renewable extraction process.
In 2018, we carried out the first oyster shell crushing tests in France (in La Rochelle). Our search results enabled us to create 2 new materials : the BIÖPRENE mainly biobased (from a mix of oyster powder, natural rubber, sugar cane, none food vegetable oil) present in our new Greenline range (available from march 2020) and the OYSTERPRENE©, available from July 2020.