How plastic bottles can change the fashion industry?

The never-ending process of clothes production makes our trashcans full. Material wastes are often impossible to recycle and they increase the number of fabrics on landfill sites. The situation seems to get even worse as the fashion industry focuses more on new products production than on waste management.

Big problem

One of the fashion designers who has noticed the problem and wanted to work against it was Mara Hoffman. She integrates recycled plastic bottles into materials she uses in her designs. As a swimwear designer, Mara was anxious especially about nylon and polyester wastes that impact the environment in a very negative way. Both materials require a lot of resources for their production and are very hard to recycle. What is curious, Unifi company had found a solution for that problem even before Mara started her concerns. Unifi invented and developed Repreve concept which is actually a fibre made of recycled plastic bottles. In 2017 Hoffman included Repreve in her swimsuit projects what was a cutting edge step towards a modern approach to fashion design. Today clothes made of recycled fibres become a significant and common part of the fashion industry.

Production process

The production process of plastic bottles fibre is performed in the Repreve Bottle Processing Center. The company can recycle even 2.2 billion bottles a year. Firstly,  the bottles are broken down into small flakes. Then they are melted down into tiny pellets and melted once again. After that, they are filtered and spun into threads. Depending on the way of production of the thread we can obtain a fibre that mimics nylon or polyester. Swimsuits, shoes, and clothes made of recycled fibres become a part of the trajectory that ensures its full usage from the beginning to the recycling process.