Speaking of fiber compounds, the first thing that comes to our mind is cotton, linen, fur, or silk extracted from plants and animals. Or, it might be the nylons and polyesters made through chemical processes. Yet, have you ever considered the possibility of plastic-made fibers?

Yes, you heard me. Sustainable plastic bottles for human wears!

To make that happen, however, requires tremendous times and effort. I mean, the Frog or Cinderella didn’t just turn into a prince or princess by accident, did they? Similarly, a plastic bottle must go through recycling, compression, flaking, desilting, and spinning before it becomes the fiber ready for use.

Step 1: Recycling

The plastic lids and sheets are first removed from the bottles. Before they are finally assorted by their colors (i.e. transparent, green, blue, yellow, etc.), plastic bottles needed to be cleansed in and out as well.

Step 2: Compression

In this stage, assorted plastic bottles will be compressed into large square cubes, which are known as bottle bricks.

Step 3: Flaking

Once the plastic bottles have been turned into bottle bricks, fiber-makers would flake them into crystal polyester beads (aka. polyester pellets), which are later spun into yarns.

Step 4: Desilting

The polyester beads undergo another cleansing process to clear out any contaminants.

Step 5: Spinning

Desilted polyester pellets would be heated until they melt into liquids. The liquids are then molded into fibers and further spun into yarns.

Despite the high cost for recycling and reusing plastic bottles, the process of making such eco-friendly yarns is found to produce less carbon dioxide and to require less water use than that of the traditional ones.

Striving to be an eco-enterprise for the last two decades, MACHIEN Inc. from Taiwan is making better decisions for our future generations by applying more renewable materials in our shoelace products.

Read in Japanese:

• 織紐産業での再生ファッション