MUMBAI: Bisleri that aims to educate citizens about the importance of recycling and upcycling plastic, has made uniforms for its sales-team from used pet bottles. A great initiative to create sustainable fabrics, these Shirts are crafted from threads derived entirely from recycled bottles. Across India, 5,000 employees are presently wearing these uniforms, upholding the vision of sustainability.

Plastic bottles are still thought to be a threat to the environment but in reality, they are not. With the help of advanced technology, bottles can be transformed into clothing. The idea behind the initiative was to practice what Bisleri preaches that PET bottles post-use are not waste. They are valuable, in fact where old newspaper fetches Rs 6 to Rs 8 per kg where single-use PET bottles fetch a value of Rs 15/- per kg post use. It’s a misconception that bottles lie in the dump yard to become landfill. Water bottles are like gold among all packaging materials. 

Currently, in India 90% of all PET is recycled for making yarn, t-shirts, shirts, etc. Bisleri through their bottles for change initiative collected millions of bottles and around ten lakhs bottles were used to make a uniform for all staff of Bisleri.

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The process of making recycled Shirts:

With the development in the recycling & upcycling technology, the collected bottles were directly sent to the recycler. The plastic bottles were crushed and converted into flakes. The flakes were converted to fiber in the conversion machine. Pet fibers are dyed in the required shades and mixed with cotton for shirting & with viscose for trousers. It took 40 bottles to make a shirt and around 45 bottles to make a pair of trousers. After mixing, the fiber is converted into yarn on the ring frame spinning machine. Once the yarn is ready, it is converted into fabric through the weaving process on rapier & air-jet looms.  Once the weaving is completed, the fabric is then sent for washing and final processing. It is moved to the tailoring unit for stitching the final uniform.

On the announcement of upcycled clothing, Ms. Anjana Ghosh, Director Marketing and OSR, Bisleri International says, “People hate plastic because they are not aware of the feats of recycling. It’s a huge misconception that water bottles add to environmental pollution. In fact, in India, we have a robust recycling industry, which produces high-value fabric, shoes and other products from PET bottles. We thought we should practice what we preach that “plastics are not waste.” Hence our entire staff across India are proudly to burst the myths around plastics. 5000 employees will flaunt their uniforms proudly made from our own plastic bottles."

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