What makes our towels different?

One of the most common questions we get asked is, "Why Evolve?"

In a world with a seemingly huge selection of "sand-free" towels, what makes us different from our competitors? And perhaps more importantly, what keeps our customers coming back?

To fully understand the difference between Evolve and our competitors, we'll have to get a bit nerdy and dive into some of the specifics of towel manufacturing and technology.

We've done our best to simplify the jargon and put together a list below of the four key properties that elevates us above our competition and, in our opinion, makes Evolve the best beach and travel towel on the market.

1. RECYCLED MATERIALS

I'm a high school environmental science teacher, and I founded Evolve with a goal of inspiring my students and demonstrating that businesses can be both successful and eco-conscious.

Sustainability isn't just something we're working towards; Evolve is built on it, which is why we developed a unique fabric from recycled plastic waste.

Typically, high performance towels are made from virgin polyester, like those made by our competitors. Virgin polyester is manufactured from crude oil and has a devastating environmental impact.

We wanted to find a better way, and so we searched for the most eco-friendly material we could find, while still maintaining superior performance. We settled on RPET, a form of polyester that uses recycled plastic waste as the raw material instead of oil.

Aside from reducing landfill, the production of recycled polyester has significant environmental advantages over virgin polyester or organic cotton:

• 90% less water is used in making recycled polyester versus polyester.
• RPET requires 70 percent less energy than virgin fibre production.
• RPET fabric has a 50% lower carbon footprint than organic cotton.
• RPET polyester fabric has almost a 90% lower carbon footprint than nylon.
• RPET polyester fabric has a 75% lower carbon footprint than polyester.

2. FABRIC QUALITY

When designing our towels, we made a conscious choice to use the highest quality materials possible.

For us, the reasoning was simple. A higher quality towel will make customers happier and also last longer, increasing the lifespan of the product and reducing the need to replace it. In the end, this means a gentler impact on our planet.

To achieve this goal, we worked with international fabric experts to produce what Innovation in Textiles, an industry magazine, called, "an innovative, high tech fabric."

We've called it our EcoLite fabric, and it consists of recycled fibers spun into a proprietary weave that improves both performance and lifespan.

In contrast, the cheaper, quick dry, microfiber towels you can find online and on Amazon etc are typically manufactured in a suede material which is not very efficient at absorbing or drying,

This microfiber suede is significantly easier and cheaper to produce than our proprietary EcoLite weave, however, is noticeably inferior when it comes to performance.

Furthermore, these cheaper towels are also made using a lower GSM. You can think of GSM somewhat like thread count in sheets - again, lower GSM is cheaper to produce but not as absorbent nor nice to touch. We make our towels at 390GSM, whereas most of our competitors are in the 150 - 200GSM range.

The difference is stark and immediately noticeable. Most cheap microfiber towels feel like you're pushing water around on your body - we wanted to avoid that! By using a combination of high GSM and our EcoLite weave, we've been able to create a light weight towel that is a pleasure to use.

Due to the superior fabric, our towels are more absorbent, dry faster and feel better.

3. RAPID DRYING TECHNOLOGY

Okay, so we separate our performance from the cheap end of town with superior fabric and material choices, but what about similarly priced "high performance" towels? Is there any difference?

Of course! We weren't just going to stop there. When we set out to make the best towel on the face of the planet, we meant it.

As travelers, surfers and beach goers, we know the importance of a quick drying towel. Stuffing a soggy towel back into your bag can be a real downer, and we wanted to design a solution to that problem.

What we came up with is simple, but wildly effective. Each one of our towels has a dark side, where things really heat up. Once exposed to the sun, the dark pigment greatly enhances the absorption of solar radiation. This heats up the water molecules, priming them for evaporation.

Adding to the performance is our unique EcoLite weave. The waffle texture of our towels increases surface area, further speeding up drying. More surface area means that more water can escape into the surround air at once, greatly increasing the speed of drying.

This dedicated drying side makes a real difference. Just ask the crew over at gadsventure.com, who put a bunch of travel towels to the test.

In a drying speed experiment, they found that "Evolve towels were the only ones that felt TOTALLY DRY after hanging in the sunshine for under an hour."

4. MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Finally and, in our opinion, most importantly, our mission separates us from most other towel companies.

Our mission is to Save the Wild. As travellers and adventurers, we view the Earth as our playground, and it's our responsibility to do everything in our power to protect it. We use recycled materials in our products, we reduce waste at every turn and we fully offset all of our carbon emissions to make sure that we are completely carbon neutral.

Furthermore, we share our profits with the environment. 10% of all profits are donated to environmental charities. In 2020 we became a conservation partner with WWF, and with your help we hope to significantly increase the size of our positive impact on our planet.