Plastic bottles (PET #1) are one of the biggest environmental disasters today. In the United States alone, 230 bottles per person go to landfill per year. These bottles, which are made from petroleum, find their way into landfills, rivers, lakes and roadsides. And they never decompose.
The technology exists today to convert these bottles into high-quality, durable fabrics which look and perform equal to their virgin counterparts. All of our GreenSmart fabrics are made from 100% certified post-consumer PET bottles. You get a top quality product made from one of the most durable fabrics in the world, polyester, AND save the planet at the same time.
Bottles are hand sorted by the collector to remove non-PET and other visual impurities. The greater the separation process, the more value the resulting material has since the refinement process will require fewer steps.
After sorting bottles are compacted into bales for efficient transport to processing plants. One bale is over 6000 bottles, enough to process into 350 yards of finished fabric.
Bales are ground into a rough material called PET flakes to be prepared for conversion to a raw material source. The fewer impurities (bottle screw tops or necks, foreign plastics, etc.) the greater the possibilities for the flakes. Low quality flakes may not qualify for reconsideration as fabric. After washing, the highest quality ground flakes are chemically separated from impurities and converted to PET chips through a process known as de-polymerizing and re-polymerizing. Once complete, the resulting fibers can be woven into yarns.
PET fibers are separated by size and fed into yarn twisting machinery. The process of converting fibers to yarns has changed little over the centuries except to become more automated. Depending on fiber size. Fibers of specific size determine the size (denier) of the resulting yarns. These yarns are then spooled for use in weaving.
Also little changed over the centuries, the process of weaving yarn into fabric using looms. The yarns for the two separate directions of the weave provides fabrics with different characteristics; heavier, lighter, finer, more dense, softer, etc. The final result is then inspected for consistency.
Each yard of finished fabric has consumed approximately 18, 16 oz. bottles and saved 10,000 Btus from manufacturing; enough power to light a 17 watt compact fluorescent light for 15 hours.
The final product looks like this:
Neogreene is a water-based material which allows for a much cleaner chemistry than neoprene. As a result, the production of the material uses 25% less petroleum, 25% less energy and completely eliminates the need to use toxin laden solvent adhesives to bind the fabrics to the Neogreene.
GreenSmart lunch bags can be ordered from Ekotribe.
