How does a water bottle get transformed into Recycled Fiber?
Repreve is high quality performance fiber made with recycled materials. It is the earth friendly solution to making consumers favorite brands more environmentally responsible. Repreve fiber can be enhanced with efficient technologies like flame retardants and water-
repellent capabilities for increased performance and comfort.
How does a water bottle get transformed into Repreve? Consumers start the process by making the decision to recycle their plastic bottles and throwing them into a recycled container. They are collected and taken to the material recovery facilities in the industry. These bottles are collected up and down the east coast and brought to the Repreve bottle crossing center where they are sorted, cleaned, and chopped into bottle flake. That flake is melted and extruded into Repreve chip or resin which is then spun into a pre-performance recycled yarn. The yarn is then either woven or knit into that goes into item consumers use every day, apparel, socks, shoes, home furnishings and automotive seating.
Since around 2007 and to date Unifi transformed more than 20 billion recycled bottles into Repreve performance fiber and every little bit counts looking ahead the goal is to recycle 30 billion bottles by 2022. What does billion bottles look like, when you look at the numbers in terms of air, water, and energy. Recycling offsets the need to make new bottles and therefore saves these precious natural resources. Recycling 20 billion bottles improves the air quality by eliminating carbon emissions from use of more than a million barrels of oil. It provides more than two million people their drinking water for year generates enough
energy to power nearly 200,000 homes for one year. These numbers in terms of what you can do you’ve got remember that every step counts.