What is Recycled Polyester?

Whilst not the complete solution to the world's issues, it is a step in the right direction!

To understand the relevance, it is important to understand the production process and its associated benefits.

1. Recycled Polyester – How is it Different?

• Recycled Polyester uses PET (plastic bottles) as the raw material.

2. The processes involved...

• Collected PET bottles are sterilised, dried, and crushed into small flakes

• The Flakes are then put through a depolymerisation and re-polymerisation process and converted to chips

• The chips are then heated and passed through a spinneret to create strings of yarn.

• The yarns are then passed through a crimping machine to create a fluffy yarn texture.The yarn is then baled, dyed, and knitted into Polyester fabric.

3. Ecological Benefits

• This process uses much less energy (nominally 35-50% less) than is required to produce virgin polyester yarn.

• This process reduces the dependency on petroleum as the raw material

• Utilising PET bottles for this process reduces landfill, thus less soil contamination air and water pollution.

• Recycled Polyester can be recycled over and over with little to no degradation of quality allowing wastage minimisation.

• As processes develop, this means polyester has the potential to become a closed loop system, whereby it is used, recycled, and reused again.

• In this case the non-biodegradability of polyester could be a good thing.