Now, garments from recycled pet bottles

Vision Textiles has come up with a technology for making fabrics from recycled pet bottles.

The company, founded in 1998 by Monique Maissan in China, has in the last 3 – 4 years not only managed to make fabrics from recycled pet bottles, but has since expanded its presence into India as well.

The company's garments under the Waste2Wear brand has started to create waves in this part of the country.

“The initial reaction for products made from recycled pet bottles has been good in India, especially in the making of children's school uniforms,” Maissan said, responding to an email.

Conceding that the reaction to making garments from recycled plastics has been different in different geographies, Maissan said “in China, the Government started to promote green, albeit recently, so when the word “recycled” is used, there is some hesitation as the large mass associate it with “not being clean” or “low in quality”. But in Malaysia, the response for our products has been phenomenal; looks like it is going to emerge as one of our most successful markets.

“We have just started in Europe; the initial response has been positive, but penetrating into the US has been tough. We started our Indian operations just a year-and-half back,” she said.

When BusinessLine caught up with Rajvanti S and P T Mani, Directors of Vision Textiles (India operations), at their garment making unit at Kalapatti, the former displayed the entire product range including sports wear (for men, boys and girls), ladies dresses, t-shirts, upholstery, curtain, table runners and mats, and baby products such as sleeping bag and sheet.

For manufacture of Waste2Wear range of products, Rajvanti said that she sourced yarn from units located in different parts of India, blended it with cotton/ polyster for making the fabric and ultimately stitching the garment. “We ensure that the yarn that we source from the units are made only from recycled pet bottles. Incidentally, every process is certified by agencies approved by Government for quality and standard and the garment quality guaranteed by International Test Reports (ITS) and BSCI approved production factories,” adds Mani.

Explaining the various steps in recyling process, the Chief Executive of Vision Textiles said “the plastic bottles are stripped off caps and labels, cleaned, processed into flakes and washed; the clean-flakes transformed into chips and yarn -gently pulled from the melted chips. The 100 per cent recycled polyester yarn can either be used directly or blended with eco-friendly yarn to produce Waste2Wear fabrics.”

“We are setting up a project – Waste2Weave in India. It is aimed at developing new fabrics and handloom techniques to empower women. We are working with TARA looms in Delhi for this,” Maissan said and pointed out that Plastic Catch, (Vision Textiles other project) aims at roping in fishermen to take out plastic waste from the sea when they go fishing.

On a parting note she said that the company is in discussion with possible investors to scale things up before looking to partner with companies that would be interested to work towards a green environment.

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