Clothing made from Recycled Material

[hyphen]

I am seeing more and more signs on clothes of all kinds (cotton,polyester, cashmere, wool etc) saying they are being made from recycled material. Which is good on principle but wanted to check if anyone knows more about what goes on?

Is it some elaborate process of breaking down the recycled materials, involving chemicals that will later give me cancer?
Is the recycling process expensive? As the price is the same or more
Where do they source the material from? As they will need a huge amount readily available on an ongoing basis, so not from a clothes bin at the supermarket.

[vaud]

https://goodonyou.eco/recycled-clothing-materials/

[Spare tyre]

In the 80s I’d use old bin bags with associated bin juice for Halloween costumes

I was well ahead of my time

[dartissimus]

Green credentials are nothing new

The "Heavy Woolen District" of West Yorkshire, principally Dewsbury and Batley was the world leader for over 200 years in recycling old garments to remake fabric, using old clothing, off cuts from clothing manufacturers and redundant army uniforms.

Heavy Woolen because the main product was principally blankets and military wear.

Wool garments such as suits, jackets, sweaters and coats were "cleaned" to remove all non wool material and sorted into shades.
Then they were "pulled " into fibre called Shoddy and blended with new wool fibre to make yarn and then fabric.

This trade has almost completely disappeared; from the early 80's, the value of second hand clothing as clothing exceeded the value of the various materials that could be recycled.

Second hand clothing, that is not sold in the Charity and Vintage shops is mainly shipped to Eastern Europe and West Africa for resale and to India and Pakistan where there is still a demand for clothing for remaking back into textile products.

[RobbieTheTruth]

I have a North Sails/Prada t-shirt made from old water bottles

https://www.yoox.com/uk/12667109TX/item#cod10=1266...

[Glade]

Adidas Parley: https://www.parley.tv/updates/adidasxparley?rq=adi...

I think the plastics just get processed e.g. separated, shredded to flake, cleaned, remelted and extruded/chopped into pellets, heat treated for crystallinity as required so they can be re-used in the normal way like PET bottles.

[smifffymoto]

I buy Rapanui,they seem to be transparent and honest,or as honest as any one else.

[StevieBee]

PET (Plastic Bottles, mainly) is commonly used to make fabrics. The plastic is chopped into flakes and melted, then forced through fine nozzles to create thread which is woven into fabric, normally alongside natural yarn.

Old fabric is also processed to create padding for jackets. The fabric's shredded, washed, bleached and essentially de-constructed.

hyphen said:

Is the recycling process expensive?

No more or less than making items from new natural material - when taking into account total supply chain costs.

hyphen said:

Where do they source the material from?

Household recycling collections via plastic brokers and processors.

[RedWhiteMonkey]

I'm sure there are some good examples but there are definately companies using previously unused bottles and the like to make their "recycled" clothing. Technically they are from recycled material but environmentally the material was never previously used and there is actually a greater level of production/impact.

[StevieBee]

RedWhiteMonkey said:

I'm sure there are some good examples but there are definately companies using previously unused bottles and the like to make their "recycled" clothing. Technically they are from recycled material but environmentally the material was never previously used and there is actually a greater level of production/impact.

Not really. Unused plastic bottles will normally be unusable stock due to manufacturing flaws or overrun stock. The material and energy consumption has already been spent so if it goes back into the recycling process regardless of whether its made into textiles or new bottles makes no difference. The only time there would be any negative impact is if they ended up in landfill.

[RedWhiteMonkey]

StevieBee said:

RedWhiteMonkey said:

I'm sure there are some good examples but there are definately companies using previously unused bottles and the like to make their "recycled" clothing. Technically they are from recycled material but environmentally the material was never previously used and there is actually a greater level of production/impact.

Not really. Unused plastic bottles will normally be unusable stock due to manufacturing flaws or overrun stock. The material and energy consumption has already been spent so if it goes back into the recycling process regardless of whether its made into textiles or new bottles makes no difference. The only time there would be any negative impact is if they ended up in landfill.

But manufacturing them to be donor bottle solely for "recycled" clothing rather than manufacturing the material for the clothing results is an additional process and strikes me as somewhat pointless. These aren't unusable stock, these are bottles solely manufactured so some companies can claim their clothes are manufactured from recycled bottles. Its marketing nonsense pretending to be environmentalism.