Textile manufacturer Unifi is transforming the world's trash into useful projects. The company is turning 4 billion plastic bottles into graduation gowns for roughly 400,000 college students.
Jay Hertwig, Unifi's vice president for global branding, said the move is to lessen garbage occupying landfills and to make the firm innovative and socially responsible, CNN Money reported. The company, which is based in Greensboro, North Carolina, generates 300 million pounds of polyester and nylon every year.
Processors around the U.S. supply the clear plastic bottles to Unifi. By the time it reaches the company, the plastic bottles are already turned into plastic flakes, which the firm then converts into small pellets that will be melted, extruded and whirled into polyester yarn.
During the last seven years, Unifi has converted 4 billion used plastic bottles into yarn. Hertwig said other plastics like plastic cutlery and food storage containers can be turned into yarn as well, as long as it is made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.
Recycling Brands
Repreve, Unifi's flagship brand, was launched in 2009 and its production of recycled materials has spiked around 20 percent annually. Repreve uses three types of recycled yarn: 100 percent from used plastic bottles, a cross between plastic bottles and fiber waste and a mixture of plastic bottles and used fabric, CNN Money listed.
Repreve's fiber or yarn has been made into jackets, t-shirts, dress pants and car upholstery, as well as clothing brands like The North Face, Adidas, Levi's, Nike, Ford and Patagonia. According to Hertwig, over 1,250 universities use graduation gowns made with Repreve yarn. Those colleges are Brown University, Michigan State, Yale, Notre Dame and University of North Carolina.
Oak Hall Cap & Gown is making graduation wear from 100 percent Repreve yarn. The clothing company's "Green Weaver" line of sustainable graduation caps and gowns uses Unifi's technology, the Triangle Business Journal wrote.
Hertwig said it's important for universities to practice sustainability in waste management, energy conservation and environmental protection. With recycled gowns, campuses exhibit the significance of saving the environment especially to the youth.
Circular Model
Nike's Flyknit innovation, which was launched at the 2012 Summer Olympics, is proof of the company's efforts to reduce its environmental footprint. Flyknit shoes have a one-piece upper part that doesn't need several material cuts, resulting to Nike cutting 3.5 million pounds of trash.
More and more companies are delving into recycling due to the continually rising demand and a finite Earth, according to BBC. This is why companies have thought of a circular model, which takes waste from an action and turns it into the other's source.
