June 8 marks International Oceans Day, a date established by the UN with the aim of recognizing the importance of oceans on the planet. This year’s theme is ‘Catalyze action for our … ocean and our climate’, advocating for a healthy, equitable and sustainable planet, recognizing the connection between social and environmental issues. Achieving circularity in the world of fashion is key to protecting natural resources and ensuring that the industry remains aligned with the firm purpose of caring for the planet, a planet in which the oceans play an important role.
For years now, brands like the Spanish Ecoalf They work with the goal of being circular, creating monomaterial designs that can be easily recyclable, fundamental aspects in the great impact that the fashion industry has on the planet. They arise in this purpose new materials, fabrics and fibers to give life to more sustainable and committed clothing collections. «Since 2009, our mission is to no longer use the planet’s natural resources indiscriminately. That’s why we decided to use recycled materials, giving a second life to waste such as nylon, polyester, wool and recycled cotton, reducing water consumption and CO2 emissions,” the brand says. New materials like its famous ‘thread of the sea’, a premium recycled polyester thread that is made with plastic that is collected from the bottom of the sea. Between 5-10% of the garbage that Ecoalf Foundation collected from the seabed is PET bottles that, thanks to an innovative process, are transformed into the aforementioned thread.
Process of transforming plastic waste into clothing
Ecoalf
How do you turn waste into a garment?
The brand collaborates with fishermen from different parts of the world to collect waste in the seas. The waste is deposited in some specific containers in different ports and periodically they are transported to treatment plants for classification. The different selected materials become raw materials again. Specifically, the plastic waste is transformed into flakes and pellets, ready for a new life, like the conversion of PET plastic in polyester thread for use in the textile industry.
Ecoalf
In its latest collection for spring/summer 2024, Ecoalf has converted 1,149,871 plastic bottles. Their garments, often timeless and versatile, do not lose quality or design with products such as John loafers (€129.90), made with the famous recycled polyester sea yarn that comes from those plastic bottles collected from the oceans; waves Prince knitted sneakers (€95), which “give a second life to 4 plastic bottles from the ocean.” For winter, the Iceberg coat for men and Glam coat for women, are two of their ‘top sellers’, made with these innovative recycled materials to reduce their impact without compromising the high performance characteristics that I usually look for in a coat of these characteristics, saving more than 3,500 liters of water and reducing more than 4.3 kg of CO2/per coat.
About the Ecoalf Foundation
‘Upcycling the Oceans’ is the most ambitious project of the Ecoalf Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2015 with three objectives: to collaborate in cleaning the oceans, give a second life to garbage recovered at the bottom of the sea and raise awareness about the problem to prevent it. What started with 3 fishermen in 2015 has expanded to Spain, Greece, Italy and France and now Egypt, collaborating with more than 4,000 fishermen throughout the Mediterranean, turning ocean waste into Ecoalf’s iconic Sea Thread for its top quality garments. .
“What I didn’t expect the first time we pulled the net was to see a lot of plastic bottles, cans and all kinds of waste mixed with the fish,” Miriam Artacho, fisherwoman for 5 years in Areyns de Mar (Spain). Each and every day that fishermen go out to fish, they voluntarily remove waste from the ocean, having recovered more than 1,700 tons of waste since the project began.
