Gear

Here comes a new wave of green watches

Bio materials, recycled ocean waste and blockchain gem stone tracking are changing the watch world's offerings

As the vast majority of watches are made from steel, a substance that can be recycled an infinite number of times without any reduction in quality, you might think there is not much to be be done in the way of making timepieces more sustainable or ecologically friendly.

Manufacturing improvements? Brands like Omega and Bremont now have eco-friendly factories. As for provenance, it may be easy for the buyer to avoiding rare materials such as tantalum that can be associated with questionable mining practices, but tracking gem stones used to adorn high-end pieces is much harder. Fortunately, companies are developing blockchains for just this purpose. 

There are, in fact, myriad other eco initiatives being rolled out across the watch world. Fortunately, many of these centre around material innovation placed in the very watches around your wrists rather than on pimping far-flung factories or developing new logistics systems.

One eminently accessible example is Swatch's new collection of 'Bioreloaded' watches made from bio-sourced materials extracted from the seeds of the castor plant, and thankfully this includes pieces from its SISTEM51 mechanical watches range where the company managed to automate the production of automatic movements comprised of just 51 components. 

The self-winding movement, seen on the £124 WAKTU51, has an exceptional 90 hours of power reserve, and even the packaging, made of paper foam, a material consisting of a mix based on potato and tapioca starch and then injection moulded, is fully biodegradable and can be recycled with paper waste or even composted at home.

Not stopping there, at this month's Watches & Wonders show Swatch launched a new range of 47mm Big Bolds at just £108 made from another new material, Bioceramic. Constructed by mixing two-thirds ceramic and one third bio-sourced plastic the new compound is supposedly both durable and scratch-resistant while being smooth against the wrist. The skelotonised design displays the quartz movement within. Available in five colours (we'd go for the C-PINK), the watch's strap, glass and loop are also all made from bio-sourced plastic.

Meanwhile, Breitling’s new Superocean Heritage ’57 Outerknown range has been launched with a sustainable NATO strap collection woven from ECONYL yarn, which is made from recycled nylon waste pulled from the ocean, including discarded or lost fishing nets. This means these straps are not only recycled but also recyclable. At £3,400, the 42mm Superocean Heritage ’57 Outerknown  – co-designed with surfer Kelly Slater – itself is a perfectly serviceable and stylishly simple sports watch, with 42 hours of power reserve, ceramic bezel and 100m water resistance.

But taking this idea of aquatic conservation to a much further degree is the Tom Ford 002 Ocean Plastic watch. At £895, the timepiece has a case and woven strap that are both made entirely from recycled material. Indeed, some 32 bottles of plastic waste is used to make each Tom Ford 002 Ocean Plastic watch. And not to fall at the final hurdle, the recyclable packaging is also made from 100 per cent ocean plastic. While not being an automatic piece, the sleek 40mm quartz-powered watch also sports a stainless steel caseback with a black DLC coating and a simple matte black dial with lumed numerals, and is good 100m of water resistance.

Lastly, Panerai is marching on with its continued desire to be an innovator of new materials and technologies aimed at pushing watchmaking in a much more sustainable direction. It's new £54,000 eLAB-ID, again just revealed at Watches & Wonders, claims to have 98.6 per cent of its content made from "materials integrating a high weight of recycled elements". 

Yes, this doesn't mean the watch is made from 98.6 per cent recycled material, but there is still much to applaud here. Recycled titanium alloy has been employed for the case, dial and movement bridges, recycled SuperLuminova for the luminous numerals, and even recycled silicon for the escapement. (The escapement turns rotational energy into lateral impulses. That familiar tick-tock sound a watch makes? That's from the escapement.)

Moreover, having worked with a number of suppliers in the industrial sector to develop the materials and processes necessary, the brand is putting aside Swiss watchmaking’s normal code of secrecy and making these public knowledge, in the hope of encouraging other brands to follow its lead.

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK