It's not breaking news that our plastic bottle consumption is out of control.  It's estimated that in the US, we consume roughly 25 billion plastic bottles a year!  It's all a bit disheartening, but thankfully recycling is at an all time high, and there are some great companies doing some great things to reduce the amount of waste pouring into our landfills.  I was psyched to find one of those companies right down the road from me.  EARTHTEC, the Portsmouth, NH based outdoor apparel company has been working hard putting some of these pesky plastic bottles to good use, reincarnating them into green outerwear, from winter coats to socks.

I recently had the opportunity to try out one of their softshell jackets, the Tupelo, and I was thoroughly impressed.  As you'd expect from a company named EarthTEC, it's a high performance and technical piece of outerwear made with serious use in mind.  They advertise it as water and wind resistant but I've worn it in some unpleasant weather over the last couple months and have found that water beads up and rolls off nicely and the December wind doesn't penetrate at all.

Another nice feature is the chest pocket, which is the perfect place to hold my phone when I'm out for a run.  The chest pocket keeps it from bouncing around like it would in a pocket closer to my hips, plus it has a little hole on the inside of the pocket that allowed me to run headphones up the inside and out the neck.

The soft micro fleece liner feels great on the arms and neck and they've even folded a flap of fleece over the top of the zipper so it's not constantly rubbing on your chin when you have it zipped to the top.  It fits well with an athletic cut but it's light weight and stretchy so it moves easily.

It's really a comfortable, functional and great looking jacket and while I don't have a lot of plastic bottle to recycle, I feel good proudly wearing someone else's waste.