Like many other industries, the luxury watch world has embraced environmentally friendly manufacturing processes and sustainable materials in recent years, particularly brands strongly associated with diving and the sea ? from Breitling’s use of ECONYL straps crafted from recycled fishing nets, to Oris’s recycled PET casebacks on its Clean Ocean Limited Edition, all the way to Ulysse Nardin’s Diver Net concept piece with its world’s-first case made entirely of recycled material. At Watches & Wonders 2021, Panerai upped the sustainability ante to a heretofore unattained level with its Submersible eLAB-ID, a concept watch boasting “the highest percentage of recycled-based material ever made.”

According to Panerai, which developed the Submersible eLAB-ID at its Laboratorio di Idee research-and-develoment workshop, fully 98.6 percent of the watch’s total weight “comes from materials integrating a high rate of recycled elements.” Breaking that number down to specific elements, the eLAB-ID’s case, sandwich-style dial, and movement bridges are composed of EcoTitanium, an aerospace-grade recycled titanium alloy first used by Panerai on 2019’s Mike Horn Edition of the Submersible. Its dial is the first to use recycled Super-LumiNova on its hands (made of recycled gold) and hour markers. Even the sapphire crystal over the gray-tone dial comes from a recycling process. The Grigio Roccia fabric strap with ligh...