It’s Time You Started Doing Less Laundry

Thanks to Polygiene, you can save water and energy, extend the life of your clothes, and smell better after a ride.

Picture this: You’re on a road trip and you reach into your bag to grab a mountain bike jersey and it smells like a PCT thru-hiker is living in your duffle bag. Yep, stink happens. Especially after days on the road wearing the same layers for sweaty bike rides. But what if your clothes didn’t have to smell so bad?

Some scientists in Sweden have figured out a remedy. It’s called Polygiene, and it’s an antimicrobial silver salt solution that combats odor-causing bacteria at its source. Apply that treatment to fabrics and your clothes stay fresher for longer, which means you can skip a laundry load without your riding partners stiffing you from six feet away.

“It’s a silver ion wash that fully coats the fabric and the yarns so that it won’t absorb moisture or odor,” says Chris Blum, Flylow’s senior director of product. “It basically repels odor before it starts.”

In our spring 2021 collection, Flylow added Polygiene to all of its knitted, technical tops, like the Bandit Shirt, Shaw Shirt, and Garrett Shirt for men, and the Moonlight Shirt, Hawkins Shirt, Jana T, and Jessi Shirt for women. Basically, if the shirt is designed for getting sweaty in, we added Polygiene to make you less stinky after a ride or run. You’re welcome.

The Benefits of Polygiene

The benefits of your clothes being less smelly are surprisingly plentiful. Let’s start with the versatility factor. You can now go for a ride, then grab a beer after without having to change out of an offensively stinky top. You can pack less on your next trip and wear the same shirt for a few rides in a row. You can avoid going to a laundromat on your next road trip.

The environmental benefits of not washing your clothes are huge. Did you know that every time you do a load of laundry in a washing machine, millions of plastic microfibers are released into the water and eventually find their way to the ocean? That sucks. (Not to mention the leaching chemicals found in some detergents and dryer sheets.) Plus, the carbon footprint of doing laundry is surprisingly big (wash in cold water to cut that down by heaps), while dryer machines are total energy hogs. A clothes dryer zaps 6 percent of your home’s energy.

Then there’s the water usage: Most standard home washing machines burn through roughly 41 gallons of water per load. That’s enough to bathe a small elephant. When water scarcity is a global problem impacting more than 40 percent of the world’s population, why are we wasting gallons of precious clean water just to get that hot sauce stain off our shirt?

“Think about how much water you can save by not having to wash as much,” says Blum. “You’re saving water, but also adding to ease in life. Less laundry is less laundry. Who doesn’t want that?”

Long-Lasting Apparel

Our design philosophy at Flylow is based a lot on what we need and what we wear every day. The clothes we make need to be functional, versatile, and also durable. Running your clothes through a washer and dryer every other day will start to break down those threads. So skipping a laundry load will actually extend the lifetime of your garment and improve its durability. That means less throwing out old shirts and replacing them with new ones. Your old one works just fine still.

“Being a company that stands for durability and versatility, those two things allow you to do more with the same garment,” adds Blum. “Go on a bike ride, meet up with friends—wear the same shirt. You may still stink, but your shirt at least will smell better.”