The recycled PET-yarn that brings new life to post-consumer plastic bottles
Step-By-Step Towards More Sustainable Fabrics
At Stellini, our reason for existence is making comfortable mattress fabric for a good night’s sleep. But we strongly believe that we will sleep even better if we go to sleep in the belief that nature should not pay for our sleep.
SOME OF OUR GREEN FOOTSTEPS
The vast majority of our water consumption consists of rainwater. The textile waste from our production is collected and distributed to companies that reuse it as a raw material in their activity. Next logical step: product development based on sustainable raw materials. Re-Use is an example of this.
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
The plastic bottle fiber
20,000 plastic bottles are used every second. That’s more than a million bottles every minute. 80% of these bottles is being added to landfills or end up in the ocean.
This asks for a solution, and the message is in the bottle itself…
As the call for sustainability continues to grow, so do the options for eco-friendly materials. Typically, plastic bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is a highly recyclable material.
Polyester yarn is one of its promising new applications and we are excited to put it into use with our RE-USE fabric.
FROM BOTTLE TO YARN
How it’s made
The process of making yarn out of PET bottles, is straightforward; recovered plastics are chopped, ground, melted and formed into flakes.
Because plastic bottles are made up of the same polymer as polyester, it is possible to break them down and remake them into “recycled” polyester. The process of making yarn out of it, is straightforward; post-consumer plastics are chopped ground, melted and formed into flakes. At this stage a flame retardant chemical is added. Polyester chips are made, heated and extruded and the result is a recycled yarn, ready for weaving.
THE LOW-IMPACT YARN
Sustainable in many ways
More than just finding a new life for waste, it is the way it is produced and how it can be reused that makes Re-Use so unique.
First there is the material itself: the yarn provides a use for plastic substances that would have otherwise ended up in landfills.
It also reduces many of the resources that are involved in virgin polyester production, including somewhat 50% less energy, compared to what is needed to make the virgin polyester.
Additionally, unlike any typical polyester textiles, Re-Use uses a mechanical process for production rather than a chemical method. This cuts down on any toxins previously generated from the conventional system.
And last but not least: Polyester yarn can be recycled over and over again without degregation of quality. This way, fabric manufacture could potentially become a closed loop system in which polyester could forever be reused.
