Most of us are making an active decision to reduce the amount of single use plastic we use in our lives. But from time to time, we all pick up a bottle of water on the go. Once we are done with the bottle, we have two options. To bin it or recycle it.

Most water bottles are made from PET, which stands for polyethylene terephthalate, is a form of polyester (just like the clothing fabric and the base for most activewear). The same plastic making water bottles and other single use plastic items can be reworked into activewear.

And it’s all done through 3 relatively easy steps.

• Once the plastic bottles are cleaned and sorted by you and your local recycling centre, the empty bottles are moved to a specialist recycling centre. Here they are placed in a flotation tank to remove any labels and lids, which are sorted separately. 

• The old water bottles are placed into a machine which coverts them into small chips of plastics. This is where the magic a.k.a. science happens. The plastic chips are the heated, mixed with specialist good chemicals which break down the plastic into tiny molecules. These molecules are then reformed into a specialist polyester. 

• This polyester is then worked into a soft fabric, blended with spandex to give us our fabric that is moisture wicking, durable and a 4-way stretch. The fabric is then dyed to one of our prints or colours and sewn to create your new leggings.

 By reworking old plastic water bottles, we are saving bottles from ending up in oceans or landfill.