How on earth do fishing nets, fabric scraps and post consumer plastic waste come to be tough, durable, water resistant yarn that's made into reusable shopping bags?

The recycling for our yarns starts with rescuing a mix of waste including fishing nets, fabric scraps, carpet fluff and industrial plastic from landfill and oceans all over the world.

Healthy Seas is the organisation who have made it their mission to recover the ghost fishing nets. Last year 100 volunteer divers throughout 27 fishing communities collected 78 tonnes of fishing nets from the Mediterranean, Adriatic and North Sea.

Once recovered the nets and other waste were sent on to be washed, sorted and shredded into pieces small enough to be transformed via huge chemical reactors that break down the components of the material and regenerate them into polyamide 6. The final product of the process is ECONYL® recycled yarn, that’s what then becomes our reusable recycled solid colour and two-tone shopping bags.

It’s mind-blowing, complex recycling textile technology developed over four years by Aquafil, a company that originates in Italy . But it’s backed up by reassuring facts - for every 10,000 tonnes of ECONYL® raw material, 70,000 barrels of crude oil are saved and 57,100 tonnes are C02 eq. emissions are avoided. And when it comes to climate change? It reduces the global warming impact of nylon by up to 80% compared with nylon material made from oil.

Then there’s CYCLEPET® - the fabric that we are using to create our brand new Lane print reusable shopping bag range. It’s created from yarn woven from 100% recycled plastic bottles. That process begins with the rescuing of post-consumer plastic bottles - the very stuff that is sent to recycling bins. They’re broken down into pellets, that are melted and spun into PET fibre which is then woven into fabric.

The OTHER Bag was developed because we wanted stylish reusable shopping bags made from recycled materials with a production process that has a positive impact on our oceans and environment. Heard of closed loop production? That’s what we’re aiming for - a production process in which post-consumer waste is collected and recycled and used to make new products. Both ECONYL® and CYCLEPET® are generated from waste with none of the planets resources used to create them, making them part of a closed loop production process and part of the circular economy.

We hunted for reusable shopping bags that were strong, a great size, and so stylish that we’d want to keep on reusing them. When we couldn’t find them we decided to design our own, taking our beach-side surrounds as inspiration.

As Bondi Beach, Australia, locals we’re fortunate enough to live with the beach and ocean on our doorstep. And, we’d love to preserve what we have and undo some of the damage done for future generations. Our goal is to continue to work with innovative fabrics derived from recycled waste so your purchase will continue to have a positive impact.

To view our range of bags made from recycled and regenerated waste visit: https://theother-bag.com/collections/all

http://healthyseas.org/