Celebs Collaborate to Promote Recycled Jeans
Alanis Morissette and Woody Harrelson have teamed up to promote the launch of reco® Jeans, a new line of eco-friendly jeans made of recycled materials.
reco has taken pieces of excess fabric – that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill – to construct the jeans. These materials come from surplus items from retail stores and include a mixture of fabrics including cotton, spandex, polyester, ramie, nylon, linen and wood, among others.
According to Reco's Web site, "all the excess denim, threads, rough edges and unused material gets recycled and intertwined with a combination of recycled and fresh cottons to create an innovative new form of fabric, a unique recycled denim blend." Photo: Recojeans.com
The material is then broken down and spun into yarn, a process that is tedious and detailed. Once the fibers have been separated, they are ready to be spun into yarn and woven into sheets.
According to reco Jeans, the company has taken a few extra steps in its design:
- Stitching – recycled threads
- Buttons and Rivets – non-toxic process
- Tags – printed on plantable seed paper and 100 percent recycled paper
- Poly Bag (for shipping purposes) – made from recycled materials
- Gift Box – reusable and made from 100 percent recycled paper
- Labels – reco has eliminated the number of the labels (size, name, style, care, fit, size stickers, etc.) and narrowed it down to only two: care label and the style name patch
However, the jeans are not made from 100 percent recycled material as it is difficult to make durable denim without fresh cotton. But reco’s 50-percent content is still a much higher content than most recycled denim jeans, which comprise only about 1 to 3 percent recycled denim.
The pre-launch bidding for the jeans will end on July 18. There are 300 pairs of select styles, which have no asking price as the bidding is set up as a “Dutch auction.” You can try your luck and bid via the reco Web site. Winners will receive a limited-edition boxed set that includes a pair of reco jeans, a reco-designed iPod case and a certificate of authenticity.
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Trey Granger
posted on July 16th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I keep hearing about factories figuring out what to do with “manufacturing waste,” and I think it was Nike that once referenced it as material that ends up on the factory floor instead of in shoes. Don’t assembly lines eliminate most of this? I guess if you’re cutting jeans pockets in a sheet of denim though, you’ll end up with a fair amount of scrap.