Wear Your Plastic Proudly

Did you know that your fleece jacket might be made of recycled pop bottles? In fact, a single fleece jacket uses the equivalent of 25 two-litre pop bottles. New recycling technologies now make this possible.

According to Encorp Pacific (encorpinc.com), a federally incorporated nonprofit corporation that buys and sells water, soft drink, and juice containers, approximately 285 million plastic bottles were sold in Canada in 2003. Nearly 229 million containers were recycled in the same year&a recovery rate of 80.5 percent. After being sorted into various types of plastic, returned bottles are ground into flakes that are spun into fibre and then milled as post-consumer recycled (PCR) fleece.

Recycling plastic bottles not only keeps bottles out of the landfills, but for every 3,700 two-litre bottles that are recycled, a barrel of oil is saved and approximately one-half ton of toxic air emissions is kept from the atmosphere.

Look for PCR-fleece products next time you're shopping for a warm winter jacket. Future generations will be glad you did.