Did you know that one adult T-shirt can be made from 20 plastic bottles? That is what a Dubai-based business is doing, recycling up to 60 million plastic bottles per month and producing approximately 20,000 T-shirts per day.
They are aiming to recycle more than one billion plastic bottles this year and spin them into polyester yarns that can be used to make T-shirts, dresses, leggings, and other eco-friendly clothing. Emma Barber, managing director of Dubai-based DGrade FZ LLC, stated in an interview with Khaleej Times one day prior to June 5’s World Environment Day that producing clothing with a sustainable twist results in less plastic waste going into landfills. In addition, the T-shirt made from recycled bottles costs 12% to 15% less than a standard polyester shirt.
The assembling system is certainly eco-accommodating as it doesn’t utilize oil, which is a limited asset. When compared to virgin polyester yarn, it produces 55% fewer carbon emissions, uses 20% less water, and conserves 50% energy. Stylist has over 30 years of involvement with retail design and she’s a long-term advocate for manageability. Her organization, DGrade, created 185,000 Shirts for Exhibition 2020 Dubai, bringing about redirecting 3.7 million plastic jugs from landfill.
Her motto is “plastics are made to be recycled,” and her mission is to encourage people to recycle regularly.
She stated, recycling helps us meet our need to conserve resources and reduce our consumption. The United Arab Emirates has the fourth highest average annual consumption of bottled water per person in the world, with 450 bottles per person. The United Arab Emirates produces approximately 4 billion plastic bottles annually, and recycling rates are currently below 6%.
“To safeguard the climate we really want to see genuine change — beginning with our own way of behaving. We urge individuals to live by the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle,” she added as she described how T-shirts are made from plastic bottles. To start with, reused bottles are arranged and deprived of whatever can’t be handled like jug covers and marks
The plastic jugs are then washed and destroyed into plastic pieces prior to being softened at high tension, expelled, and turned into a polyester yarn. To make T-shirts and other types of sustainable clothing, the yarn can be woven or knitted in the same way that conventional fabric is made. From the collection of the bottles to the production of the T-shirts, the entire process takes about 60 days. The company makes polyester yarn of high quality from plastic bottles. This yarn can be recycled into more than 200 different kinds of fabric, including jersey, twill, poplin, canvas, quick-dry, felt, denim, and all kinds of clothing and accessories like T-shirts, dress shirts, trousers, caps, bags, backpacks, and many more. It can also be recycled into jeans.
