CLOTHING MADE FROM RECYCLED PLASTIC

Around 10 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans every year. According to projections, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050 with the status quo. More and more clothing manufacturers, including some large ones, are therefore now focusing on the trend of producing clothing from recycled plastic collected from the oceans. This gives the customer the good feeling of doing something for the environment and the manufacturing company has a positive marketing effect. But are we saving the environment by buying clothes made from recycled plastic? Will we end up wearing every piece of plastic that would have ended up in the sea on our skin in a few years’ time?

Probably not.

“The underlying idea is not a bad one, of course, but in the long term the environmental benefit is rather limited,” says Thomas Fischer, Head of Circular Economy at Deutsche Umwelthilfe. The recycling process is very time-consuming, and the chemical cleaning of plastic waste in particular is very energy-intensive. Plastic from the world’s oceans can be contaminated with many pollutants. “We doubt whether the quality is suitable for the production of textiles,” explains Fischer. “It is not readily possible and cost-intensive to separate the pollutants from the material. For example, pesticides that have been banned for decades have been detected in ocean plastic.” This means that a harmful effect on health cannot be ruled out.
Another problem is the lack of planning certainty:

Fischer explains, “The companies themselves also lack planning security. They don’t know what type and quantity of plastic is lying around on the beaches.” Not every type of plastic is suitable for the production of textiles. “It’s more of a coincidence if they find enough PET to make a fleece sweater out of it.” And once this fleece sweater is produced, it can never be recycled again, as this is not possible with fabric blends made from natural and synthetic fibers.

A fitting term to summarize society’s approach to clothing is “fast fashion”. This refers to short-lived clothing with low quality and a low price. This results in a short useful life, which means that a lot of new clothing has to be produced all the time, resulting in a high environmental impact due to the use of chemicals and water consumption. According to projections by Greenpeace, sales of clothing have more than doubled since the year 2000. It would make more sense to make new clothes from old clothes. This would save important resources and avoid energy-intensive clothing production processes.