There’s a fascinating article in the latest issue of ReadyMade about the state of art in plastic bottle recycling. Factory Special highlights the Foss Manufacturing plant in Hampton, New Hampshire, where 350 million plastic bottles per year are turned into textiles.

With all the controversy surrounding plastic bottles these days — Should we ban them? Are they polluting our bodies with bispehnol A? — we may have missed one point. It turns out that something useful and functional can be remade from the 51 billion receptacles that invade the landfill each year: fabric. In fact, your fleece hoodie might very well be made out of Eco-fi, a fiber derived from 100 percent recycled plastic bottles.

The article follows the process it takes to turn a bottle into fabric, from the chipped plastic bits that resemble snow cone filling to the fiber filaments that “feel eerily like human hair gone unwashed for so long that it’s soft with grease.” There’s also some great photos, and surprising facts like it takes just 10 plastic bottles to make a pound of fiber.

Click on the image below for a free preview of this article on Coverleaf.com.

Look Inside >> August/September 2008