A study was done and found between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic material ends up in the oceans every year. The amount of plastic pollution to enter the ocean each year will massively increase by 2025.
It takes decades for a simple plastic bottle to breakdown in the ocean. When it does, it continues to break down into smaller and smaller fragments. These fragments end up on every mile of beach, on every continent and what makes it even worse, is that these fragments breakdown even further into micro plastics. These killers might be invisible to the naked eye but to fish, they appear as food, deadly food – which we ultimately end up consuming.
Not only does this affect us but it affects our future generations, unless we do something drastic about it now. So, what can we do when all seems lost? Well, a decade of plastic misuse will not be fixed in a day or two but we have to start changing our habits now if there is any hope of righting our wrongs. We have to come up with practical alternatives that will replace what is already extremely practical and these alternatives have to be affordable and easily accessible. One of these alternatives, is using sustainable materials that have been manufactured from recycled materials.
We’ve all seen products that have labels written “made from 100% recycled plastic” on them but not understanding what that really means. We get that plastic can be recycled but how does it actually become a product that one can reuse over and over again, instead of our convenient and harmful single use plastic bags.
Enter rP.E.T felt. One of the most beautiful recycled plastic bottle materials I have ever seen. Not only is it durable but it’s totally sexy in its’ finish, and surprisingly multi-functional – PET Felt is recycled as well as recyclable itself. Let’s take a look at this amazing material.
PET Felt is made of recycled PET bottles (the type of plastic found in water or soda bottles). The bottles are collected from various recycle centres and community bottle drives, which is in-turn ground into flakes and melted into liquid form. This is then extruded through machines to produce fibre. This fibre is then used to manufacture nonwoven felt, as well as many other fibres such as duvet and pillow inners, tote bags, backpacks, laptop bags, slippers, hats, pot plant holders, acoustic panels, cell phone pouches and even knitted into t-shirt fabric – the list is truly endless.
Whichever product you decide to have made from this amazingly versatile material, you would be doing a world of good. Not only will you have a beautiful item which you can use over and over again, reducing our impact on fragile landfills or further destroying marine ecosystems but you are also opening up opportunities for local community drives and helping maintain the income of those that collect bottles on the street.
Research Sources: https://blog.arcadiapower.com/
