“We don’t start with easy problems. Hard problems are generally the most rewarding”: Inside System 0, Arc’teryx’s plan to rethink the life of a jacket

When Katie Becker first saw Arc’teryx at a trade show in 1998, the brand stood out because it was doing almost everything differently.

At the time, snowboard and outdoor clothing was dominated by bright colours, oversized fits and bold graphics. Arc’teryx had taken a different approach.

Sitting on a pedestal was a simple, one-colour jacket that looked almost out of place among everything around it. It was the Alpha jacket, and what caught Becker’s attention was not just the appearance, but the thinking behind it.

The jacket featured waterproof zippers, a new approach to Gore-Tex construction, and a three-dimensional design inspired by the way climbers move. Even then, Arc’teryx had looked at the problems with existing products and tried to solve them from the ground up.

Almost three decades later, Becker, now Chief Creative Officer at Arc’teryx, sees that same mindset behind System 0, the brand’s attempt to tackle one of the most difficult problems facing the outdoor industry: how to create high-performance equipment while reducing the amount of waste created throughout a product’s life.

System 0 is not a single jacket, material or technology. Instead, it is a broader approach that brings together product design, manufacturing, repair, and end-of-life solutions, aiming to create products that last longer, are easier to repair, and, eventually, easier to recycle.

As Kyle Wood, Arc’teryx VP of Strategy, explained during the System 0 presentation, circularity is a highly complex, systemic problem, and it won’t be solved with a single product or strategy overnight.

For Arc’teryx, the project extends what the company has always tried to do: solve difficult problems with real consequences.

Starting with the hardest problem

Arc’teryx’s approach to product development has always been based around a few simple filters. Is the product authentic to the brand, does it solve a genuine problem, is it beautiful, and does it meet the company’s standards around responsibility?

That final point has become increasingly important as the brand has looked at what responsibility means beyond simply making durable products.

“We have people that love our product that have been wearing the same jacket for 12 years, 15 years,” said Becker. “And we really started to look at what does responsibility really mean? How do we build it to repair it? What are we doing about end of life?”

That thinking eventually led to System 0, a four-year project exploring how Arc’teryx could approach circularity in a way that matched its existing standards.

The team quickly realised that creating a circular product couldn't mean simply making a jacket with different materials. It required a wider system around the product, including repair services, manufacturing changes and a way to recover materials when the jacket eventually reached the end of its useful life.

Alex Plante, Arc’teryx’s VP of Advanced Concepts, explains that the team wanted to avoid treating circularity as a separate sustainability project.

“We knew that circularity wasn’t going to be about a product alone,” she said. “We knew that a product needed to be created, because that’s what we make, but it needed to be a product that was a proof point for a new system that we wanted to drive forward.”

The team could have started with a simpler product category, but that would not have been the Arc’teryx way. “We don’t start with easy problems,” said Plante. “Hard problems are generally the most rewarding.”

The chosen product was a waterproof jacket, one of the most technically demanding categories in outdoor clothing. A shell has to protect users from rain and snow, allow freedom of movement, work with climbing equipment, and remain durable after years of use.

And, as Arc’teryx found out, it also happens to be one of the hardest products to make circular.

Learning from products that came back

One of the biggest advantages Arc’teryx had when developing System 0 was ReBIRD, the brand’s repair programme. It gives customers the option to repair damaged equipment rather than replace it, but it also gives Arc’teryx something equally valuable: information.

Because returned products come back through the company’s Vancouver facility, designers can examine where products fail, which components wear out, and what customers need from their equipment after years of use.

“We were able to learn and understand how people use our hardshells,” said Plante. “We were able to learn what breaks first, what people loved about them, so that we could design out failure points right from the very beginning.”

The first version of the jacket pushed the idea of recyclability much further than the final product. One early prototype removed zippers completely because zippers are one of the biggest challenges in recycling garments.

However, when Arc’teryx tested that design with athletes and professional users, the response was clear: it was not practical. “It was sustainable, but it didn’t make sense,” explained Becker.

The jacket became easier to recycle, but it lost the functionality that made Arc’teryx products useful in the first place. That became one of the key lessons of System 0: circularity could not come at the expense of performance.

No compromises on performance

For Andrew Yip, Senior Director of Materials in Advanced Concepts at Arc’teryx, the biggest challenge was creating a jacket that could use more recyclable materials while still meeting the same performance standards customers expect.

“The common theme, especially from the beginning, was an uncompromising approach,” said Yip. “We knew that we wouldn’t be able to create something that we weren’t proud of, and that meant not sacrificing performance in any way.”

The project involved working with several industry partners, including Aquafil, GORE and Toray, to create a new three-layer laminate using post-consumer waste.

Aquafil supplies the recycled nylon used in the jacket, produced through chemical recycling. Unlike mechanical recycling, which melts materials down and can reduce their quality over time, chemical recycling breaks nylon back down into its original components before creating new material.

Yip compares the process to ice cream. “If you’ve ever had ice cream melt and refrozen it in your freezer and tried to eat it again, you know that ice cream doesn’t taste or feel the same,” he explained. “That’s mechanical recycling.”

Chemical recycling works differently because it breaks the material down further, allowing it to be rebuilt with performance closer to the original material. The jacket isn't made from a single material, though, because the company found that a completely mono-material approach would require too many compromises.

“We knew that really wasn’t an option for us because of our standards in performance and durability,” said Yip.

Some components, including zippers and reflectors, still need separate handling at the end of life. The important change is that Arc’teryx has designed the jacket so those parts can be removed and processed as efficiently as possible.

Even small details were considered. The black zipper teeth, for example, were chosen because changing colours during manufacturing creates additional waste.

Designing a product people want to return

One of the hardest parts of creating a circular system isn't just recycling materials, but collecting and sorting products when people no longer want them.

This is where Arc’teryx believes ReBIRD gives it an advantage. “The idea is that we’re building the garment that people want to bring back to us,” said Yip. “They want to bring it back to us because they want to keep it, and they want to repair it, and they want to use it as long as they can.”

Eventually, when a product can no longer be repaired, Arc’teryx wants to use that existing repair network to identify when it is ready to be recycled. This is a crucial part of System 0 because collecting and sorting old textiles is one of the biggest challenges in creating a circular clothing system.

Testing beyond the laboratory

Given Arc’teryx’s history, it is perhaps unsurprising that System 0 involved extensive testing, including placing jackets in a cement mixer with gravel to simulate abrasion, then checking whether they remained waterproof.

Another test looked at contamination from human oils, which can eventually affect the bond between a waterproof membrane and the outer fabric. These tests were designed to understand how long it could realistically remain functional.

The final product was also tested by professional users, including search and rescue teams, who helped shape the design. Their feedback sometimes meant choosing function over recyclability. More pockets, for example, were necessary because rescue teams need space for medical equipment and additional supplies.

The beginning of a bigger project

Arc’teryx sees the Sperro SV as a starting point, with lessons that can eventually influence more product categories and services. “This is really the beginning of our journey,” said Plante.

The ambition is not simply to create more sustainable products, but to change how people think about their relationship with equipment. “We’re really looking to change the way that people think about their products from a customer or consumer to a custodian of a product,” she said.

System 0 aims to keep those products in use as long as possible while reducing the impact created along the way. It is a complicated problem, and Arc’teryx is clear that this jacket will not solve it alone. But that has always been the company’s approach to innovation: start with the hardest problem, test relentlessly, learn from failure and keep looking for a better way.