We created these products with one goal:
To keep them out of the landfill.


Each item in the Endless Promise collection is painstakingly engineered for total recyclability.
That way, once this gear has accompanied you on its lifetime of adventures, it can easily become something new.

This is just one step in our effort to take full responsibility for what we make, from beginning to end.
Because with Endless Promise, there doesn't have to be an end.

The endless promise logo with a man and woman working on a piece of paper.

The product that started it all: the Forte™ Endless Promise® sleeping bag.

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The Problem is every year, millions of outdoor products are created. This includes sleeping bags, pads, and backpacks. And of all that gear, only a tiny percentage is recyclable, so when it is done adventuring, it has nowhere to go but the landfill. We are a part of that problem. So, we are on the journey to be part of the solution.
The solution. With Endless promise, we are taking responsibility for the entire life cycle of our products and designing for total circularity. Distilled to its simplest, circularity is the solution for keeping items out of the landfill. Longer use through durability and repair. Reselling to a new owner for continued adventures. Recycling at the end of a products usable life. With your help, every endless promise product can live on, endlessly. So instead of creating mountains, we can continue climbing them

Recyclability Is the Toughest Piece of the Puzzle

A person wearing a gray shirt sketches a design on a piece of paper with a black pen, on a cluttered workspace.

Unfortunately, you can’t just toss old sleeping bags or backpacks into the recycling bin along with your empty cans and bottles.

We knew the key to making a successful recyclable product was making an easily recyclable product, and that meant a mono-polymer approach was needed.

Mono-polymer design means creating a product that’s nearly entirely made from a single material family. (Currently, the easiest consumer goods material to recycle is polyester, so that's where we set our sights.)

While basic outdoor gear might typically use anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen different materials, we have to simplify our Endless Promise designs down to just a few.

Three people examining a backpack prototype on a table with design sketches in an industrial workspace.

The development of Forteâ„¢, a sleeping bag, was hard. The development of two very technical backpacks, in comparison, was like going from a 5.11 indoor climbing route to free soloing El Cap.

But like all design challenges in NEMO history, our team responded with innovative solutions. These solutions not only met the sustainability standards, but they also surpassed our sky-high performance ones. In developing our Endless Promise® packs, we’ve introduced two new materials that make these products better on the trail and better for the user. We also integrated repairability into the patterning of the packs themselves, so they can stay on the trail longer.

Two people sit outside near a tent in a grassy area, with sleeping bags visible inside the tent. The sun is shining brightly in the background.

Even with products that were technically recyclable, however, our work wasn’t done. We had to ensure there was a place to send our products when they had reached the end of their adventures — a place that could process and ultimately break down the gear into new, usable material.

For Forte, we found the right partner with Unifi, a U.S.-based recycler that was excited to accept this challenge. Unifi is known for their REPREVE® yarns, which are created from recycled plastic and used in everything from shoes to tent pole bags. For our down bags, Allied Feather + Down in Los Angeles can extract the down from the bags and then send the remaining material to Ambercycle, an advanced chemical recycler also in Los Angeles that can break things down to a molecular level for a stronger, infinitely recyclable new material.

Through these partnerships, and the support of Endless Promise® customers, we hope to one day produce new products made from our old ones.

Endless Promise® in the Press

A person stands in a sunlit field with mountains in the background, shaking out a sleeping bag.

REI's Good Gear

How NEMO Made its Top-Selling Sleeping Bag Fully Recyclable

A blue sleeping bag is laid out on a red sleeping pad inside a green tent. The tent is set up on a sandy surface with sparse bushes visible outside.

Gear Junkie

Recycle This Sleeping Bag: Forte Endless Promise Sleeping Bag Review

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