The graphic T-shirt at the Brooklyn Industries store looks and feels like any normal tee, perhaps even softer. So soft, in fact, that it’s hard to believe it’s made from 14 recycled plastic water bottles.
For the hip, green consumer, transforming trash into something wearable and saving it from a landfill can be thrilling. “They have been a hit,” says Lorie DelMundo, public-relations and events coordinator at Brooklyn Industries. Unfortunately, at the end of their life, these polyester garments made from bottles can’t be tossed in with regular plastic recycling.
It’s a problem that Rethink Fabrics, the Seattle-based manufacturer of Brooklyn’s recycled bottle T-shirts, is trying to work out. By spinning the bottles into a type of polyester, Rethink and companies such as Patagonia (which sells recycled polyester fleece) move plastic from landfills into closets.
To truly keep bottles out of landfills and oceans, Rethink is developing a program with national retailers, which it hopes to launch next year, to collect the “plastic shirts” and recycle them into new shirts. In case you were wondering, the shirts can’t be turned back into plastic bottles due to health and safety regulations on recycled plastics in food packaging, says Stacy Flynn, global director of sustainable development for Rethink.
Source: BusinessWeek
By Venessa Wong