Greige - Is this the fabric of the future?

My lightweight tent, greige fabric.

This is my lightweight tent, I came across greige fabric when researching different tents before I bought it.

As part of a candidates Mountain Leader assessment, the syllabus asks for each person to come to the assessment with two, 5 minute “presentations” prepared. The idea is that at any time during the 5 day assessment, a candidate can take the opportunity to talk about their chosen subject to the rest of the group. Topics are assumed to be related to the subject of leading in the mountains so could be about an environmental issue, mountain leadership, mountain rescue, flora and fauna for example.

One of my topics involved me wild camping and coming face to face (500m away) with a reindeer bull in the Cairngorms - but that story is for another day or blog post!

I started off camping with a Vaude Terra trio 3 person tent. It is a great tent, long enough for me and big enough (you’d hope being a 3P tent!). I could go camping with another person and still be comfortable in it but when it came to wild camping , it was a no-go for me, weighing in at just over 3kg.

I used it for my mountain leader training and it just made my pack weight far too much! So, after my mountain leader training i embarked on a mission to find a new tent. I was still getting to know wild camping and whether I really enjoyed it so I didn’t want pay out a small fortune for a tent and eventually came across this tent from FORCLAZ.

The big thing that jumped out me about this tent (no shocks here) was the colour, it is bright white! But, when I looked closer the description made for some interesting reading. FORCLAZ (Decathlon) say that using the greige fabric which is a term used to describe a fabric that is undyed and basically a fabric straight from the weaving loom.

Decathlon make some pretty bold claims on their website;

“Using this finishing process enables us (Decathlon) to reduce CO2 emissions linked to the production of undyed textiles by at least 58% compared to conventional dyeing.”

I liked that so decided to look into greige fabrics more, which they say 95% of this tent is made using undyed yarn. Well, I found it was a thing and in actual fact, the dyeing of fabrics and the heat treatment used in the process is unfriendly to the environment too.

I had never realised all of this previously and now, i’m glad i’ve had my eyes opened it. I’m not saying that everything I use will be greige but if I can make a small difference, they all add up! A lot of online reviews, especially when the tent was released, were solely commenting on how the white is no good for stealth camping, it gets dirty but, I have never worried about my tent getting dirty - I’m wild camping, it is going to get dirty and now that i have used it a few times i’d say it is holding up very well.

These are my thoughts, I’m not collaborating with Decathlon to give a good review but I really like the tent, especially with the reported environmental benefits and low cost.

Let me know what you think? Do you have the tent or do you use another like it? Good or bad, all welcome for the discussion!

Thanks

Duncan.