As Sassy Spirit continues to move towards stocking beautiful accessories that are environmentally sustainable, I was delighted to find a supplier offering Eco Scarves.
What is an Eco Scarf I thought? They look and feel like regular scarves; same size, shape, texture, beautiful prints, how were these different?
Eco Scarves are made entirely from recycled plastic bottles.
A standard scarf starts life as 5 bottles and a neck scarf as 3.
Step 1 - Collect Waste Plastic Bottles.
The UK Government estimate that 7.7 billion plastic bottles are bought across the UK every single year. This creates a staggering amount of plastic waste so unfortunately there is no shortage of plastic bottles waiting to be recycled.
Step 2 - Clean and breakdown.
Before plastic can be recycled it has to be thoroughly cleaned. This means putting it through large industrial cleaning machines that wash the plastic before breaking it down into small pieces ready for processing.
Step 3 - Melt the plastic to make Resin pellets.
The broken down pieces of bottle then have to be heated at a high temperature. This is called the "cracking process" and it produces the polymer which will go on to become the new plastic. The new polymer is then chopped and shaped into pellets ready for it's new assignment.
Step 4 - The pellets are turned into fibre.
The dry and cooled pellets are then fed into a "Spinneret" where they are reheated and pushed through holes under pressure to create strands that are spun at high velocity. At the end of the process new strands of soft fibre are produced.
Dye can then be added to the fibre to create colours as required for garmet production.
Step 5 - The fibre is woven
The woven fibre is then used to create our Eco scarves. Colours, prints and motifs are all used to bring the scarves to life and create beautiful and sustainable pieces of fashion ready for wear.
Our planets consumption of plastic is now out of control. National Geographic estimates that over half the plastic in the world today has all been produced in the last 15 years. If we continue to utilise plastic at this rate our oceans and rivers will be completely choked with waste and our planet will become one big landfill site as we struggle to bury our plastic waste. Some of which will take more than 400 years to break down.
Innovations in fashion production is happening, Eco scarves are one small part of this much needed revolution. Please take a moment to consider your next purchase.
To view our evolving Eco Scarf collection please use this link.
Thanks for reading.
