Did You Know? Your Tent Started Out as Molten Thread—And It’s PFAS-Free

Before it was shielding you from a midnight downpour, the fabric on your AirNEST was a plastic bottle—shredded, melted, and reborn with purpose.

Here’s how it all goes down, on a micro level:

1. Recycling Begins
   Used PET bottles are collected, stripped of labels and caps, washed, and ground into crisp little flakes.

2. Molten Transformation
   Those flakes are fed into an extruder—a giant heated screw that churns them into a viscous, honey-like melt. It’s basically smooth, hot plastic.

3. Filament Formation
   The melt is forced through a fine spinneret (basically a metal showerhead with microscopic holes). Each droplet solidifies mid-air into filaments thinner than a human hair! We’re talking 10–20 microns wide. These filaments cool instantly, stretched by high-speed rollers that align the molecules and increase strength and flexibility.

4. Yarn Spinning
   Thousands of these filaments are gathered and twisted together into polyester yarn. It's strong, featherlight, and smooth—like spun glass, but ready for battle.

5. Weaving the Fabric
   These yarns are fed into high-speed looms to create a tight, low-porosity weave. For AirNEST, the weave is ultra-fine to ensure a tough, lightweight shell.

6. Silicone Coating—Just One Side
   The outer face only is coated with liquid silicone, not sprayed but laminated under heat and pressure, so it bonds deep into the fabric structure. No flaking. No peeling. Just permanent waterproofing.

7. PFAS-Free by Design
   Most water-resistant gear uses PFAS (those nasty “forever chemicals”) for repellency. Not here. The silicone coating does all the heavy lifting—no toxic runoff, no chemical legacy.

So yeah, that rustle of fabric you hear as you zip up the vestibule? That’s recycled plastic, spun molecule by molecule, woven thread by thread—and engineered to keep nature wild, not polluted.