Nina Mairanger, student at the Wiener Neustadt Fashion School in Austria invited us to wacht this video about the amazing process of transforming plastic bottles into clothes. She has written the following interesting essay about this topic.
Nina Mairanger, estudiante en la escuela de moda de Wiener Neustadt en Austria nos invita a ver este vídeo sobre el proceso de transformación de las botellas de plástico en ropa. Ha escrito la siguiente reflexión sobre el tema.
"In the UK billions of plastic
bottles are thrown away every year. We are getting much better at recycling
them, but did you know that they also can be turned into clothing? .
This amazing process starts at
the bottle recycling center: The first stage is shredding. When you throw away your
bottle you often leave a small amount of drink inside. Shredding all the
bottles releases the unwanted liquids so it doesn’t affect the quality of the
plastic. The shredded bottles are then wrapped in cellophane and boxed up ready
to be shipped around the world. It may be rubbish to us, but to the Chinese
textile Industry this plastic waste is a valuable commodity.
Recycled bottles arrive from
around the world to feed the busy clothing industry. Sorting separates the
clear plastic from the colored stuff. Clear plastic can be made into white
clothes or material that can be dyed, so it’s extremely valuable. Most clear
plastic bottles have colored lids and stickers on them but these have got to
go, so the bottles head for the baths. The colored caps are made out of a
different plastic, which floats.A worker can then strain them off the top. Then
there’s a separate bath for the stickers, but the workers have to be careful
around this one: it’s corrosive caustic soda - very bad for the skin, but very
good for removing labels. After all their wimming what’s left is a pile of
clear plastic shreds, but it’s rather wet.
The next step is the oven, where it’s mixed with some light colored
plastics. To produce white cloth, you need some light shaded material in the
mix. The plastic will spend about 10 hours in rotating drums, where it slowly dries
out.
The plastic bottles are now
broken down and mixed to produce the right colors but it’s very hard to we have
cloths from bits and pieces, so another step is needed. The mixture is sent
through a rotating screw, where it’s heated to 270°C. This melts the plastic,
but to make cloth, we don’t want a big
lump - we need thread.The liquid plastic is forced through a sieve and emerges
on the other side as little strings, which are collected in the container
below. We’ve now got thread but it isn’t strong enough to make cloth yet. First
it must be combined and stretched several times while being heated - this will bond the fibers together. Now,
it’s taken ages to produce this material, but the next part of this process is
to tear it apart again. The fluff that
emerges is the raw substance you need to makePolyester. However, that takes
place in another factory all together, so the workers bail it up and send it
on.It looks like cotton, but it is an entirely man-made substance, created from
your old bottles. A machine scrapes it all into a very rough cloth which is
loaded into another machine, ready to be carded. Carding
is where the bonded fibers are brushed together, so they all lie in a similar
direction which strengthens the material. The sheet of polyester-felt that
emerges is now ready to be turned into thread. These machines will tease it out
- they spin off mile after mile of pure polyester which is collected on bobbins (Buch S. 56). And
finally, we reach the point where your old plastic bottles become cloth. Like a
spider at the center of its web, the loom draws in thousands of threads and weaves
a new sheet of polyester.
So we’ve turned our recycled
bottles into Polyester at last. Now it’s time to make some clothes. Using a
roll of material stylists mark out the latest designs being as economical as
they can with their handy templates.
Although they are profiting
from your rubbish, they don’t want to create any more waste. The pieces will
then be sent to workers who turn your trash into the trendiest gear you can
find on the high-street. So what started out as your rubbish was carefully
sorted, then shredded and turned into cloth. That cloth was shredded into
fluff, spun into thread and turned into fashion - from plastic bottles to Polyester
clothing".
Given its importance, Professor Teresa Echevarria decided to turn this matter into a "Educational Innovative Project" and proposed to create a working group (12 teachers and 180 students) to adress this subject . The "Valladolid Teachers Resource Centre" supported this idea and collaborated in the organisation of talks and conferences as well as in the dissemination of this "Art School Teacher's Guide: What Can I do for you".(Available in English by request).
Desde el principio del Proyecto Leonardo nuestra escuela tuvo en cuenta uno de los principales objetivos que cumplir: Reconocer, desarrollar y crear un porfolio con las habilidades requeridas por los profesionales internacionales que ayude a eliminar las barreras a la mobilidad. Los estudiantes deben ser conscientes de la gran cantidad de oportunidades que tienen para estudiar, trabajar y encontrar colaboradores fuera de sus fronteras y de su entorno y ataduras familiares.
Valladolid Fashion School TEMAT invited us to attend their last fashion show. Our school wants to support local designers and looks forward to closing collaboration with them.
Fashion is everywhere, and Miguel Olmedo, 2nd year Illustration student, is aware of this. He has designed fashionable outfits for video game characters on the basis of traditional soldier uniforms. There's a matching set of shoes, accessories, weapons and colour schemes to most people's favourite video game characters. His inspiration comes from history, mithology, movies. In addition, Miguel has done this research in the field of video games.We strongly recommend to read his project and wacht his video clip. 
