Startup
Startups That Are Saving The World by Turning Plastic Waste Into Reusable Fashion
How Tech Companies Are Merging Sustainability And Fashion
As we enter the rainy season in Asia or Fall in the west. Around the world people are getting back to their normal activities. These past few months have been a whirlwind. The Olympics in Paris took place and all eyes were on the games.
This year, the Olympics focused on sustainability. Which was why the grandstands of the Olympics were made from 70 tons of recycled plastic waste. This raises the question, does sustainability only happen once in a blue moon when the world is watching?
The answer comes from India where several startups are currently focusing on turning plastic waste into fashionable items such as swimsuits, hats and T-shirts. Recycling plastic items into clothes is not a novelty, high street brands such as Zara, Lululemon and H&M have been producing clothing from recycled materials for several years now.
However, what makes these Indian startups unique is that unlike the high street brands, they are making clothing not from disregarded clothes but from PET plastics such as water bottles.
The technology to recycle plastics such as PET bottles were limited to turning those bottles into bracelets of furniture. However, due to the advancement of technology, it is now possible to transform those bottles, collected from the ocean, and spin them into yards to be made into clothing.
Plastic pollution has been one of humanity’s biggest challenges. Yet none of the major consumer goods companies who are the biggest plastic waste producers are helping or solving the plastic pollution crisis. Take for example Coca Cola, it is one of the most popular brands worldwide.
The Coca Cola company produces three million metric tons of plastic packaging annually. No matter how many paper straws or recycling yogurt cups the average person does, it can’t compete nor solve the issue of cleaning up three million metric tons of plastic on an annual basis. With the current trajectory, according to the World Economic Forum, by 2050, plastic bottles will outnumber fish in the oceans.
This is where startups such as Goya Swim and Ecoline clothing can make an impact.
Currently these companies are based and operate in India. However, these companies are answering a demand and cater to the needs of the global public.
Goya Swim
Goya Swim was founded by Riya Majumdar who is an activist founder. Despite her lack of tech and startup background, she had a passion to help the world. Most founders focused on efficiency and leveraging tech to make things quicker, Riya focused on using tech to solve one of the world’s biggest problems, plastic pollution.
She saw the damage that plastic was doing to our oceans. As someone who is very active, during her travels in India she saw that there were very limited choices in the swimwear category. This was when she decided to combine her passion for the environment with her passion for fashion.
Goya Swim crafts its swimsuits with the REPREVE technology. REPREVE collects plastic bottles located 50 km from coastal lines that do not have a formal waste or recycling system. These plastic waste flakes are then melted and turned into liquid Polymer and then formed into fiber. Afterwards, these fibers are then spun into yards. The plastic bottles are now ready to be made into Goya’s swimsuits.
Although Goya Swim was founded in 2022, it is already making a significant impact. Each Goya Swimsuit uses 29 plastic bottles which are directly pulled from the ocean.
Ecoline
Ecoline is a sustainable fashion startup founded by father and son duo K.Sankar and Senthil Sankar. Ecoline clothing caters to men and women which includes a wide arrange of modern design for everyday wear such as sports wear, night wear and winter wear.
Ecoline clothing has been in the spotlight recently when in 2023, the Prime Minister of India, PM Modi wore one of its recycled jackets to parliament.
The brand was launched in 2020 and during these short years, it has already made an impact in the world. In the past, recycled and sustainable clothing was never affordable to the general public. Which was why sustainability had always been a challenge in the fashion world.
Ecoline has proven that sustainable and recycled materials can be affordable. The brand makes clothing out of recycled PET bottles. It takes 6 PET bottles to produce one Ecoline Tshirt. In addition to the recycled PET fiber materials, the fiber is also blended with organic cotton . Most of the Ecoline clothing products cost under 10 usd.
The advancement that we are seeing recycling PET bottles is unprecedented. If things continue the way they are today, it will spark a global trend of startups doing good for the environment in addition to solving our everyday challenges.
With passionate founders striving to make a difference in the world, backed with the technology enabling them to make that difference, nothing is off the table. And nothing is impossible.
