A sports bra is a garment that covers a woman’s breasts and provides them with support during exercise. It is most often made of highly elastic polyester or polyamide knit with added elastane. A survey of online sales of sports bras found that there are 35 well-established brands on sale today, offering 48 different models, of which only four are made of recycled fibres, namely recycled polyester. Recycled polyamide fibres are not currently used for making sports bras. In the survey found that the term recycled material is mostly properly understood. As many as 74.3% of respondents thought that clothes made of recycled fibres were of comparable quality to clothes made of non-recycled fibres, only a fifth of them thought that products made of recycled fibres are more expensive. In laboratory analysis of knitwear was confirmed that polyester knit is as suitable for compression sports bras as a knit from non-recycled polyester because it has comparable tensile properties and even slightly more appropriate, as for its stretch at higher elongations (50% or 100 %) is needed higher force and also it is better elastic recovered. The recycled polyamide knit, which was made of polyamide 6 fibres, had poorer mechanical properties and was stretch at 50% and 100% elongation with lower force, respectively, than the non-recycled polyamide knit, which was made of polyamide 6.6 fibres. Knits from non-recycled fibres had poorer air permeability and lower water absorbency than knits from non-recycled fibres. Polyester knits were lighter, thinner and softer than polyamide knits. Non-recycled polyester knit is the least suitable for compression bras then other three analysed knits.
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