How Is Polyester Made From Recycled Bottles?

During the past few weeks we have been working on writing an explanation about how plastic bottles are recycled into polyester. I enjoyed writing this because we watched a video explaining to us how it is done then we wrote it in our own words. Next time I will add more add more information in the last 3 paragraphs

Do you ever look at the tag of your clothes and wonder what polyester is made from? Well it is made from the plastic bottles you recycle and throw away. They are shipped to China and goes through a procedure that is a laborious job and takes more than 10 hours to sort, put through machines and made into clothing. Do you want to learn the whole process of how your polyester clothes are made? Well if you do keep reading.

It all begins when you recycle your plastic bottles at home. When they arrive in the Bottling Recycling Centre the bottles get put in a machine to shred them. Why is this? When you recycle your bottles there will be some liquid left in the bottle. What shredding does is gets rid of the excess water so it won’t affect the quality of the finished product. They then get wrapped in cellophane and get shipped all around the world to China

Once they arrive in China they get sorted, coloured from clear. Clear plastic can be made into white fabric or fabric that can be dyed. Numerous clear bottles have coloured stickers or lids on them. These have got to go. They head to have a bath. The lids are made from a different type of plastic which makes them float. The workers then manually strain them from the top. For the stickers there is a separate bath. When you are around this bath you have to be very careful because there is a soda that is very bad for the skin but very good for the stickers.

When they come out of the baths they are very wet so the next step is the oven where they get mixed with other plastics. To make white cloth you need to combine it with the light coloured plastic. About 10 hours they have to spend in the rotating drum where the plastic is slowly drying out. Underneath the workers have to manually maneuver a cart to catch the plastic while minding their heads on other rotating drums.

Now that the plastic bottles have been broken down and mixed it is time for the next step. Since you can’t make fabric with just bits of plastic it is  put through a rotating screw that is 270° to melt the plastic. Since you don’t want to make fabric from a clump you put it through a sieve to make it into thread. Beneath workers are collecting the thread in a container. The thread still isn't strong enough to make cloth yet so it is stretched and combined with heat several times to bond the fibers together.

After all that time and effort you need to tear it apart again. The fluff that comes out is the raw substance to make polyester. After it has been teared apart again it looks like cotton wool yet it is a man-made substance. However the rest of this process happens in a different factory.

In another machine it is scraped into a very rough cloth. It is then loaded on the other side to be carded. Being carded is when the bonded fibers are brushed together so they lie in a similar direction so the material is stronger. The sheet of polyester felt is then ready to turn into thread which is done in another machine. This machine will tease it out into thread and spin it onto a bobbin.

This next step is a delicate process. A machine will make miniscule loops on the surface of the fabric and another machine will do the total opposite. It will tear the loops, this will make the fabric feel softer.

The entire process is now finished and it is finally time to make clothing. Material artists will mark out the latest designs with their templates. The layout will then get sent to workers who will make your trash into trendy gear.

There you go from what started out from your rubbish has been turned into clothes by going through a time consuming process. Sorting the bottles and putting it through many machines. But it was all worth it to make your clothing.