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.
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