I won’t be buying any boardshorts, as surfing looks to me as easy as falling off a log and just as much fun (a bit like skiing really). But if I were going to buy some smart cool shorts then I would like the idea of them being recycled from beach and ocean plastics. That sounds good to me.
Twenty plastic bottles will make a pair of shorts – it might need 25 to make me a pair of shorts (and I’d prefer they were longs).
It also sounds good to the Marine Conservation Society (and the Eden Project) who have supported Riz to crowdfund to develop such shorts. They seem to be doing quite well – but a little more help would move things along nicely.
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My son’s school blazer is made from plastic bottles, so this is clearly nothing new. What I can’t quite tell from the board-shorts website is whether these people are actually going to use bottles that they have picked up from beaches to make their shorts. They want to organise beach-cleaning events, but will they really wash and sort all of those bottles and make them into shorts????? Maybe they will!
I bought my first bottle recycled fleece (& part was waterproof) from a little factory out Barnsley way (aye folk, eeh bah gum land in Yorkshire) back in the 80s, ok they made the clothes from the material which was imported from Germany but it was a start.
The fact Riz is using recycled plastic is good, from any beach cleans is or would be a bonus. If their project stops landfill from local authority collections equally good.
This is the kind of initiative which should be supported and not least by Government who could look at tax incentives for such green initiatives?
From the Riz crowd funding page:
“Our second, and much greater challenge, is to take waste plastics from our beaches and oceans and transform them into beautiful new clothing. Our target is to make our first short from ocean plastic fabric by 2016”.
So the answer to your question is that at present the company’s shorts are not made from waste recovered off beaches but that is what they are aiming to do in future. I guess that the 2016 target may be to have a prototype or a proof of concept rather than to be in full production but either way let’s hope they are successful.
Surely people making money from recycling ocean plastic into clothing is an example however small that economics can help as well as damage the environment.