The outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia pioneered the post-consumer recycled clothing movement in 1993 with a single jacket. However, in recent years, the emergence of awareness surrounding the environmental impact of fashion has driven a growing number of companies to launch clothing products made from recycled plastic water bottles. Brands market these recycled garments as a solution to plastic waste that allows guilt-free shopping, but this simplification doesn’t do justice to the entire journey of the plastic bottle. Polyester currently constitutes 64% of all fabric production, approximately 14% of which comes from recycled plastic bottle inputs. Though new technologies attempt to mitigate the downsides of polyester, they overlook three key issues: the inevitable open loop, the shedding of microplastics into ecosystems, and the availability of more sustainable alternatives.

Despite the push for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) water bottles into recycled polyester fabric, many advocates overlook the resulting consequence of open-loop recycling. In this process, the recycled product’s material is reused a fixed number of times, ultimately ending up in the landfill. In contrast, closed-loop recycling offers the potential for indefinite recycling of materials into the same product without decreasing its quality. The process of turning water bottles into clothing is open-loop recycling, resulting in garments that end up in landfills after one lifetime. Evidently, recycling bottles into polyester clothing isn’t truly a silver bullet, as it only delays the entrance of plastics to landfills despite being marketed as an eco-friendly solution. On the other hand, closed-loop recycling allows plastic bottles to be recycled into new bottles multiple times. Though plastic bottles cannot realistically be recycled an infinite number of times, the vast majority of bottles enter the landfill long before they degrade considerably in their physical properties and utility. In fact, the number of recycled PET containers in 2018 only accounted for 29.1% of all the PET containers produced that year. Clearly, there is considerable untapped potential for closed-loop recycling in the plastic bottle industry. Instead of turning bottles into garments, which cuts short a lifetime of utility, efforts should focus on prolonging a bottle’s time in closed-loop recycling to minimize waste. 

Regardless of whether recycled or virgin materials are used to make clothing, the truth is that polyester sheds microplastics. When washed, synthetic clothes discard microfibers in the form of plastics less than five millimeters long. The water containing these microplastics eventually reaches aquatic ecosystems, resulting in microplastics near the Mariana Trench and in the snow of Mount Everest. Recently, scientists have helped the public develop a more detailed understanding of the extensive impact of clothing on the planet. Plastic microfibers shed into water from synthetic clothes constitute 85% of man-made material found along beaches, endangering aquatic ecosystems and passing into our food supply. Just through salt consumption, estimates suggest the average adult ingests approximately 2,000 microplastics yearly. The effect this intake may have on human health isn’t apparent yet. Still, there is a general consensus that the presence of plastics in the environment should be limited and mitigated based on published studies detailing the potential effects of microplastics. Humans may experience immune system disruption, transfer of microplastics to other bodily tissues post-exposure, and cytotoxicity (including potential damage to healthy cells). Fish may also experience tissue damage, oxidative stress, stunted growth, and irregularities in behavior. One study predicts the abundance of microplastic distribution in ecosystems to be so serious that it might indicate a new historical epoch called the Plasticene.  

Recycled polyester uses 59% less energy than virgin polyester while providing the same level of quality. However, blending fabrics in many garments prevents recycling; even 100% polyester clothing cannot be recycled many times, as the more commonly employed mechanical recycling process is cheaper, potentially resulting in weaker fiber requiring blending with virgin fiber for utility purposes. Thus, the inevitable contribution of textile waste somewhat offsets the energy savings of recycled polyester. Most importantly, clothing of natural fibers is a much more sustainable alternative to synthetic garments. Fibers such as cotton, silk, and wool are renewable, biodegradable, and more energy-efficient because of their natural production processes. For example, manufacturing one kilogram of polyester requires over twice as much energy as one kilogram of cotton. Plus, natural fibers do not involve the utilization of fossil fuels, while polyester stimulates the use of oil to make plastic. 

Now, the obvious question might be: why isn’t recycling old clothes into new clothes considered instead of using PET? The infrastructure or technology for such a process on a large scale doesn’t exist yet. However, it is evident that recycling plastic into textile is a sure way to curtail the lifetime usage of plastic and that natural fibers are safer for the environment. I believe that if attempts at adopting recycling as the cure for waste has taught us anything, it is to maintain as many closed loops as possible and to decrease society’s reliance on and generation of plastics rather than seeking out methods to make them “eco-friendly.”  

Works Cited

A pile of plastic bottles stacked on top of each other. Plastic bottles bottles recycling. 2016. Photography. Pixabay, 

https://garystockbridge617.getarchive.net/amp/media/plastic-bottles-bottles-recycling-animals-764f6f