Ocean Plastic Becomes Fantastic

We love materials that help to clean up our oceans. Over the past year, we’ve looked at few earth-friendly innovations coming the sea including a skateboard made from marine trash and textiles fabricated from re-harvested fishnets.

Currently, there is six times more plastic in the ocean than sea life. Perhaps the only good news to be found in this sobering fact is that low-grade plastic debris can be transformed relatively easily into a high-performance yarn. One of the latest to get to on board with this idea is the brand G-Star RAW, who in collaboration with Bionic Yarn (with Pharell Williams as Creative Director no less) are turning ocean debris into denim.

To create their denim, plastic is first collected from the ocean – which is of course not a difficult task given there is so much of it. Next, these plastics are broken down in to small chips and then shredded into fibres. The shredded plastic fibres are then spun into a yarn and helixed with cotton, resulting in Bionic Yarn. Following this, Bionic Yarn is weaved into a denim.

Considering that most people own a pair of jeans, this initiative is a great place to start in the battle to clean up our oceans. However, as these innovators admit, even if every pair of jeans in the world was made this way, the ocean would still have an overabundance of plastic.

But they hope that their work won’t end with blue jeans. If every piece of clothing – from shoes to hats – was made from ocean plastic, then a major change in the way we look at materials could be underway.