Recycled fashion

Textile Recycling
Fabrics made from recycled items are now becoming more commonplace with recycled polyester made from recycled drinks bottles now being made by companies such as Patagonia , Marks and Spencer, Armani jeans,H&M. Some fashion businesses use fabric waste generated during the manufacturing process or material that has been designated as unusable due to minor faults.
Companies like From Somewhere specialise in creating collections from this kind of fabric , and refer to this process as ‘upcycling’ rather than recycling.


There are three ways of recycling fashion:
1. Using fabric composed of recycled fibres or products- for example recycled polyster made from used drinking bottles or fabrics made from recycled yarns
2. Recycling textile fabric- (“Upcycling”) for example using unwanted factory surpluses, offcuts or materials which would otherwise be thrown away
3. Recycling or customising clothing- taking second hand clothing and re-fashioning or repairing it so it is given a second life.

More reasons to recycle

1. Landfill sites pose a threat to local ground water supplies. Every time it rains, water drains through all the rubbish, and picks up chemicals and hazardous materials from whatever is in the landfill site. This includes chemicals used in clothing and textiles such as dyes and bleaches. The water collects at the bottom of the landfill, often in large amounts and can be up to 200 times as toxic as raw sewage.
2. By re-using existing fibres and textiles, there is no need to make these textiles from raw materials (such as cotton, wool, and synthetic fibres) This saves on the energy used and pollution caused during manufacturing processes like dying, washing, and scouring.





Armani
Armani jeans have been incorporating eco fabrics and design since the mid 90’s. Their first eco project started in 1995 with the development of a process to recycle denim. This was revolutionary for the time and the jeans were displayed at the Science and Technology Museum of Milan. Later that year, Armani Jeans developed new materials using 60% recycled wool and recycled cross dyed cotton and introduced hemp eco washes into the collection. This experimentation has continued with the production of an organic knitwear range, the use of pure alpaca and the engagement with fair-trade cotton projects in Peru and Bolivia and recycled polyester.

H&M
The company launched the initiative in partnership with Global Green USA, the American affiliate of Green Cross International, and I:Collect, a Swiss-based company that processes around 500 tons of used items every day in 74 countries. Under the partnership, I:Co will repurpose the clothing collected at H&M stores.
For each bag of clothing donated, customers will receive a voucher for 15 percent off their next purchased item, H&M said.
According to H&M, as much as 95 percent of clothes that end up in a landfill every year could be re-worn, reused or recycled. The company says it wants to reduce the environmental impact of garments throughout the lifecycle and create a closed loop for textile fibers.

Gary Harvey
British designer Gary Harvey has created a magnificent ballgown - by taking 30 copies of the Financial Times and attaching a voluminous paper skirt to a salmon pink corset. The dress will be shown alongside the rest of his vintage-inspired collection, which includes innovative dresses made from old Levi 501s, Hawaiian shirts, army jackets, nylon baseball jackets and checked laundry bags. Made originally for a shoot in ID magazine's current "Eco" issue, the designs form a significant part of Estetica - a show that aims to bring attention to the importance of Fair Trade, organic production and recycling.

Intimissimi
The Intimissimi bra recycling project turns fibers from intimate apparel, old bras and other textiles into insulated soundproof construction panels. The goal of the Intimissimi promotional initiative is to raise eco-awareness.

While Intimissimi bra recycling may not actually save the planet, encouraging women to bring used bras into Intimissimi stores for a $4 credit toward the purchase of a new bra can’t be bad for business – or the environment.

Vivienne Westwood
Handmade in Nairobi, Kenya, the new collection has been produced in collaboration with The Ethical Fashion Programme. Using recycled materials from roadside advertisement banners and safari tents, each of the three designs have been hand crafted by marginalised communities of women such as single mothers, widows, HIV/AIDS victims and those living in extreme poverty.

Uniqlo
Uniqlo began a fleece-only recycling program in Japan in September 2001 as part of its corporate social responsibility activities. In 2006, the project was expanded to include all clothing and titled the All-Product Recycling Initiative.
Initially the company intended to recycle clothing for industrial use. However, most of the items received were still wearable, so focus was shifted from recycling to reusing.

Garbage Fashion
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.



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