DIY plastic clothes. The benefits of recycling - clothes made from plastic (video)

Second life of things

Natalia Vodianova became the face of the H&M Conscious collection, and pink became its calling card. The company has been promoting eco-fashion for six years. The H&M chain of stores even accepts unwanted clothes for recycling and production of new models. Another affordable brand, Topshop, does the same.

Eco-line H&M Conscious

Where did eco-fashion begin?

The Swedes and the British are not pioneers in this topic. Perhaps, Jean-Paul Gaultier was the first to bring clothes made from garbage onto the catwalk: in the 80s, he presented a high-tech collection with plastic bags, trash cans and tin cans. However, then his goal was only shocking. Conscious use of waste to produce clothing began only in the early 2000s.

Gaultier Hi-Tech collection 1980/81

Stella McCartney has been committed to ethical principles since the founding of her brand. She does not use natural leather or fur, has abandoned harmful dyes, and has a lot of organic cotton in her collections.

Stella McCartney at the presentation of her new collection at Abbey Road Studios

Sports for the environment

At the instigation of Stella McCartney in 2009, Adidas joined the fight for the environment. She created an eco-friendly line made from recycled polyester fibers, and at the end of 2016 introduced a new collection made from organic plastic together with Parley, an organization dedicated to protecting the ocean environment. T-shirts made from this material are worn, in particular, by players of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

FC Bayern midfielder Javi Alonso wearing an Adidas Parley T-shirt

And they're not the only ethical sports brand. Top football teams and clubs from all over the world play in Nike uniforms made from plastic bottles.

Charles Denson, Nike's chief brand officer: “Producing fabric from plastic bottles requires 30% less energy than producing it from virgin polyester fibers. But even saving energy is not the main thing. To make this mold, we used 13 million plastic bottles that would otherwise sit in landfills for centuries.”

Brazil national team player Neymar in Nike uniform

Other eco-trends

However, eco-fashion does not rely on plastic alone. Her followers also use organic and natural materials: jute, soy, wool, silk, bamboo or hemp and corn fibers, as Armani does. Genuine leather is replaced with vegetable leather from Hevea juice. The main principle is that the material should decompose on its own and not become garbage.

This also includes the use of natural dyes without pesticides. Or, for example, “washing without water,” which preserves fresh water supplies on earth. The famous jeans manufacturer Levi's uses dry stones instead of 42 liters of water required to wash jeans in production.

Celebrity eco-fashion advocates

Bono and Ali Hewson

U2 frontman Bono, a renowned human rights activist and green activist, created the ethical clothing brand EDUN with his wife Ali. The company's main production is located in ecologically clean areas of Africa. In addition, this is an income opportunity for the local population.

Emma Watson

Emma showed off her commitment to eco-fashion at the 2016 Met Gala, wearing a Calvin Klein and Eco-Age dress made from recycled plastic bottles on the red carpet. Even the zippers were made from recycled materials, and the inner lining of the top was made from organic cotton.

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep's gold dress made from recycled plastic from Lanvin was lucky: she won her third Oscar in it. But fashion critics recognized it as one of the worst outfits of the 2012 ceremony.

Let's join the eco-movement

And finally, some simple tips for those who want to become a supporter of reasonable consumption and are ready to make a feasible contribution to protecting the environment.

Wear things for a long time

Try to remember that quality is more important than quantity. If it is possible to sew up a torn item, do not throw it away. For example, growing cotton to produce a pair of jeans requires about ten thousand liters of water. Think about it, do you really need a new pair?

Don't throw things away

There are many ways to give things a second life: give them to those in need, take them to a second-hand store or recycle them. Especially if these are things made of polyester - a material that almost does not decompose.

Don't neglect second-hand shopping

Get involved in the cycle of things not only as a supplier, but also as a consumer. Moreover, you can often find much more interesting things in thrift stores and stores than in the mass market.

Choose ethical brands

We talked about just a few designers fighting for the environment. Every year there are more and more of them. Responsible consumption also means knowing what clothes you wear.

Photos used from the sites www2.hm.com, divany.hu, nymag.com, theoriginalwinger.com, horizont.net, www.popsugar.com, www.vogue.com

MOSCOW, September 14 - RIA Novosti, Victoria Salnikova. RIA Novosti continues a series of publications about people who organized production in Russia.

The fashion industry is turning towards ecology and ethical consumption. H&M launched a program to collect old items, and sports brand Adidas presented sneakers made from recycled waste from the bottom of the ocean. The trend has reached our country. The first Russian eco-oriented brand GO Authentic was created by Moscow designer Olga Glagoleva and the head of the consulting firm Authentic Investments Natalya Isaeva. They work with recycled plastics and handcrafted fabrics.

Does environmentally friendly mean expensive?

Eco-friendly clothing is not a cheap pleasure. Olga and Natalia’s first collection “Home” included five sweatshirts made from recycled plastic, each of which costs 11,200 rubles. If a buyer brings and returns five plastic bottles, Olga gives a 20 percent discount. The designer insists that her items are bought once and for all.

"We make timeless things, they don't go out of style. We don't have seasonal collections like most brands. Nobody needs 68 dresses, each of which is worn once - you buy a thing when you need it, and then constantly you wear it. In this context, it’s not that expensive. But, of course, it’s easier for someone to go to the mass market and buy a dress that you’ll throw away in a month or a season,” says Natalya.

Common Home

GO Authentic consistently advocates for conscious consumption and recycling. Plastic is a resource that doesn't have to be thrown away.

“We make sweatshirts from plastic, but you can create anything from it: refrigerators, slates, windows. We want to show that environmentally friendly is an alternative. It does not interfere with creating modern and interesting things, but at the same time using technologies that do not harm the planet You need to act locally - from your own entrance and apartment. The more globally a person thinks, the less he thinks about the cigarette butts that he throws at his feet. And he walks along this street, and not on another continent. With the help of textiles, we are talking. about such stories - about small things, behind which there is something big,” says Olga.

Recycled plastic fabric is soft and durable. The material is not yet produced in Russia, so Olga and Natalya order it from China.

© Photo: courtesy of Go AuthenticCollection "Home" by Go Authentic brand

"The collection reflects our attitude towards excess and excessive consumption. We assembled a five-meter collage of photographs and magazine clippings, which were transferred to fabric. This is the second side of the concept - there is so much produced in the world that nothing new needs to be done. You can take it and transform it what we have is to live for some time without harming the environment,” said Natalya.

Olga's collection also includes children's clothing. The designer taught for a year at a Montessori school (a special teaching method based on the development of independence in a child), where she told students about production. During class, each of the girls created a dress. There are ten of them in the line.

“We took organic cotton, dyed it with plant extracts, then transformed the children’s drawings into patterns and made hand embroidery from them. Each dress was designed by the girls themselves; the adults only helped them sew them,” said the designer.

© Photo: courtesy of Go AuthenticCollection "Home" by Go Authentic brand

Pajamas for Björk

Olga and Natalia’s brand is just entering the market, so it’s too early to talk about profits. To date, GO Authentic items are presented in four stores in Moscow, two online stores, as well as in Barcelona, ​​St. Petersburg and London. But we already have our first VIP client: one of the outfits will soon go to the singer Björk.

“Living consciously and environmentally in our country is expensive and inconvenient. You buy water in a plastic bottle, use it and throw it away. It’s the same with garbage in houses and apartments: we throw batteries, paper and a head of cabbage into one bucket. Acting consciously is extremely inconvenient , because you need to organize a space at home for separate waste collection. In the yards, as a rule, there are no necessary bins, so you need to find where to take this garbage. In the West, it’s different: you leave the house on one side. you have a container for collecting batteries, on the other there are bins for separate waste collection, and across the road there is a container for collecting old clothes. There is no system in Russia, but if everyone lives consciously, then eventually it will appear,” Natalya is convinced.

A pleasant event unexpectedly appeared - a masquerade ball! You don’t have the time or money to order from a tailor shop or run around the shops looking for original costumes! What to do?! Well, firstly, calm down, secondly, remember that we can do everything with our own hands and thirdly, look around. What do we always have a lot of at home? Right! Plastic bottles, newspapers, garbage bags, boxes. From this we will make the most original carnival costume with our own hands.

Mermaid or kikimora

The most beautiful place in a plastic bottle is the bottom. We cut a lot of them at once. They will decorate the hem of the dress, the bodice, and you can use them to glue together an original crown. For a mermaid or kikimora costume we will need green bottles.

After cutting off the bottoms, you still need to cut off the necks, and then carefully and evenly cut the rest of the bottle lengthwise into three equal parts. Burn small holes in the narrow part and gather them on a cord into a garland, which will become a skirt. Glue, sew or staple the bottoms along the edge of the skirt.

It is better to make the bodice of the dress by covering an old T-shirt with green plastic parts. But the crown can be assembled from lush feathers cut from bottles and attached to a hoop or ribbon.

Princess of Flowers

The standing skirt for this costume is made from a wire frame. Any thin fabric can be stretched over it. This is where the difficulties end and the creative part begins. Cut petals from bottles of different colors, collect them into flowers and attach them to the skirt. Cut half-liter bottles in a spiral and attach the “serpentine” to the skirt.

A boy's costume can be made from scrap materials by simply tying two plastic bottles together and attaching them upside down to the astronaut's back using straps. And to make our jetpack functional, glue red-orange patches simulating fire into the necks with your own hands.

Helmet, hat, crown

The largest plastic bottles are simply specially produced in order to make various headdresses from them for a hero, an alien, a king, a gentleman, a puss in boots, etc.

The photo shows how to make these hats. Cut out the fields from thick cardboard.

Costumes from…

Dress made of leaves

It is quite natural to go to an autumn ball in a dress made from autumn leaves. To create such a masterpiece with your own hands you will need few resources: just a piece of fabric or an old dress, a large bag of maple leaves and glue.

Take garbage bags of two colors, cut them into one continuous sheet, and build a costume... for example, rain.

Dresses made from improvised materials turn out amazing. Few people know that bags, even the largest ones, are glued together so tightly that they can be inflated like balloons. Inflate 15-20 bags and attach them to a long skirt in several rows. The world has never seen such a gorgeous princess.

On the contrary, you can not inflate the bags, but cut them into fringes, and then sew them on with lush red flounces.

Queen of newspaper prints

If you have stacks of old, read newspapers lying around waiting for the next repair, it's time to put them to work. See what kind of royal dress of the Lady of the Seal you can make with your own hands. All you need to do is take a printed sheet, fold it in half for rigidity, roll it into a ball and attach it to the skirt in any way. The assembly procedure is the same as in the autumn costume.

Dinosaur and box cowboy

A great dinosaur costume can be made from boxes. You can fasten the parts with a stapler, glue or tape. This requires imagination and engineering.

Another carnival costume for a boy is a cowboy on a horse. The horse's face can be made from the same plastic bottles. It’s a pity that it’s difficult to dance in circles in such outfits, and you can’t invite a girl to a waltz, but a gift for the best costume is guaranteed.

The most profitable outfit is the alien dress. Yes, because no one knows what he really looks like. Come up with whatever you want, cut it with your own hands, glue it, draw everything your imagination allows. To indicate that you are wearing an alien costume, simply attach an antenna to your head and paint your face green.

Cloud

The cloud suit is made of padding polyester. Take a white cloth or an old pillowcase.

Cut a hole in it for the head and sew in lots and lots of white synthetic fluff. White tights will complete the look.

Old and used PET bottles can be recycled in the most incredible way: in addition to the same containers for water and other liquids, they are used to make clothes. For example, jackets, pants or T-shirts.

In 2016, approximately 400,000 graduates across America wore gowns made from recycled PET bottles. To do this, it was necessary to recycle about 10.8 million pieces of plastic containers, says Earth 911.

The first clothes made from recycled PET bottles hit store shelves in 1993. To make this happen, Patagonia has invested heavily in research and development.

The brand has since pushed other clothing manufacturers to use recycled PET raw materials in their clothing. Unifi's Repreve brand was created specifically for processing PET into fabric. Today, Repreve brand recycled fiber is used by brands such as Adidas, New Balance, Timberland, Patagonia and several other companies.

Although this amazing processing and manufacturing process is quite complex, the infographic below clearly demonstrates each step. First, though, let's look at some of the pros and cons of using recycled PET in clothing.

Photo: pixabay.com

Pros of Recycled PET Clothing

#1: Using recycled materials reduces our dependence on oil

Traditional polyester fibers are made from crude oil. By using recycled PET bottles, manufacturers become less dependent on oil, saving the planet's resources.

#2: Clothes made from PET can be recycled over and over again.

All clothing wears out eventually, but recycled PET and polyester products can be recycled and broken down into fibers that can be used to make new items.

It's a pretty impressive cycle of turning old clothes into new ones over and over again. The Patagonia brand collects old clothes and, if they are still in good condition, resells them; if not, then they recycle them.

Photo: patagonia.com

Cons of Recycled PET Clothing

#1: Plastic clothing loses microfibers

The biggest problem with recycled PET clothing is the microfibers that are lost when washed, for example. Every time you do laundry, tiny plastic fibers are washed down the drain and enter the sewer system. These fibers eventually find their way into the oceans.

One researcher found that 85% of man-made material collected from shorelines was microfibers. Due to their microscopic size, they are extremely difficult to detect and purify. These microplastics have been repeatedly found inside marine life, floating in every ocean around the world, and even...

#2: Recycled PET is still plastic

We will never completely get rid of plastic, but we could reduce the amount of plastic in our lives.

While recycling plastic bottles into clothing is certainly better than the same bottles ending up in landfill, it doesn't help reduce our dependence on plastic. There are many other natural fibers, such as organic cotton and hemp, that can be used in clothing instead of plastic. Whenever possible, it is better to purchase clothing made from these more sustainable and natural materials.