From bottle to carpet and from yogurt to toothbrush: the green transformation of everyday products

Madrid

The protection of the environment is becoming a more global struggle. Climate change is more than ever a reality and during these days representatives of almost 200 countries are meeting at the Madrid Climate Summit to finalize what was approved in the Paris Agreement and commit to making drastic cuts in gas emissions so that the increase in the average temperature of the planet does not exceed two degrees Celsius with respect to pre-industrial levels and that, as far as possible, it does not exceed one and a half degrees.

However, the decrease in emissions does not depend solely on government agreements and many companies are already launching their own initiatives to reduce their impact on the environment. That is why more and more companies are launching to manufacture their products through recycling, giving a new life to disposable materials and creating objects that are often made of materials and everyday products that users are unaware of.

There are bottles in your winter clothes

Winter clothing has been incorporating the use of recycled materials in its composition for years without much of the public knowing this detail. There are not a few companies that use plastic bottles to create the lining and padding of coats and garments for the cold, while with nylon waste some of the outer fabrics of the garments can be created.

The polyester lining in many coats can be created from old plastic bottles, and up to 150 bottles of this material can be used on some garments. The same goes for some of the materials that sleeping bags are made from.

Polar fleeces are another of the garments in whose manufacturing processes the use of recycled plastics is more frequent. To create the thread that makes up this type of garment, there are companies that use dozens of recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, which are the ones used by most companies that sell bottled water.

Stepping on bottles and straws

Although you may not know it, your feet may be resting on bottles and other plastic items in your house. And it is that more and more carpets are made from recycled elements. Plastic materials such as nylon, polyester or polypropylene are already quite common in these decorative elements.

The most common objects to be recycled in the creation of rugs are once again PET bottles for water or soft drinks. These rugs tend to be more stain resistant and produce fewer emissions when manufactured than rugs made with traditional materials and methods.

This trend of creating rugs with recycled plastic bottles has recently reached the most famous furniture and decoration company on the planet. Ikea has been marketing a model called 'Sporup' since this winter season, for which the Swedish multinational uses 320, 500 or 750 recycled PET bottles depending on the size.

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There are companies that go further and not only make their rugs with plastic bottles. Examples of rugs made entirely from recycled straws, a highly polluting product, are already on the market. Spain is the European country that uses the most plastic straws, according to a Greenpeace report that estimates that 13 million units are used in our country every day. They are elements that take about 500 years to degrade and have a harmful effect on the environment and can be ingested by fish, turtles and birds.

The thousand lives of used tires

When the useful life of a tire comes to an end, the possibilities of reusing its materials for other daily uses skyrocket. The tire recovery process begins with their transfer to a plant where the wheels are crushed and their materials are filtered, separating the rubber from other components present in tires such as textile fiber or steel.

One of the most common uses of used tires is to form part of the asphalt or paving of streets and highways, but there are some more unusual ones. The padded floors of playgrounds are largely made from recycled tires, as are many of the bollards that we see at pedestrian crossings in many cities in Spain. There are also companies that use used tires to create sandals, in which more than 300 grams of this material can be used to create a pair of flip flops.

Your yogurt can end up on your toothbrush

The useful life of a toothbrush does not exceed three months, so each person uses about four brushes a year. If we multiply that figure by the almost 83 years of life expectancy of the Spanish, it could be said that each person uses about 332 toothbrushes throughout their lives. And these utensils create problems when recycled, since they are often mistakenly thrown into the yellow container, when in fact they should be recycled in a clean point.

In our country, 160 million toothbrushes are manufactured each year, in the production of which thousands of kilos of plastics are used that take an average of 400 years to decompose. In fact, there are already studies that state that 1% of the plastic waste in the sea comes from toothbrushes. Being made of materials such as PVC, rubber or nylon, their recycling is a complicated process, which is why ecological brushes made with wood or bamboo have begun to be marketed.

However, there are already companies that are betting on recycling when creating these everyday products. In fact, one of the practices that some international brands are already carrying out is recycling yogurt containers to make toothbrush handles. Of course, under the guarantee that the bristles are always new.

T-shirts with bottles and slippers with fishing nets

Plastic is one of the most useful materials after being recycled and there are companies like Nike that have taken advantage of its possibilities to integrate it into their sports kits. The material of many of this brand's shirts is made with polyester from recycled plastic bottles.

These bottles are melted down to create threads that are later transformed into fabric. Approximately 15 plastic bottles can be used to make a t-shirt and shorts, reducing the environmental impact and energy consumption by up to 30% compared to traditional polyester.

In fact, large sportswear companies often carry out campaigns in which they present products made through the recycling of everyday products. Adidas has in its catalog a collection of shoes made from plastics collected on the coasts of various seas and oceans and with soles printed in 3D with the plastic extracted from fishing nets in these areas.

It looks like wood, but it's not.

Fences in parks, platforms, tables and benches that you can see as part of both urban furniture and terraces and private gardens... Some of these objects have an appearance that imitates wood, but they are created based on the recycling of all kinds of plastics.

Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS) and other polymers are some of the materials used in the manufacture of these floors and objects that seem to be made of wood, but they are not.

more and more examples

With a society aware of the seriousness of the problem of climate change and with companies making more and more efforts to reduce their environmental footprint and the amount of harmful emissions to the planet, the number of products created from the recycling of other everyday objects is greater time.

Jewelry made from recycled glass bottles, biodiesel made from used cooking oil, bodies created thanks to the reuse of aluminum, backpacks made from plastic bottles, pavement and tiles that are built thanks to the rubble and dust generated in the demolition of buildings, sunglasses made from recycled fishing nets, recycled glass bricks, bicycles made from the aluminum of reused soda cans, and even buildings made entirely from recycled plastic bottles. Every day there are more possibilities that recycling allows when it comes to giving a second life to all kinds of everyday objects.