Anvil T-Shirt Is Made Out Of Recycled Plastic Bottles

Fast Company:

It's a noble idea on the part of Anvil, since the company could easily get just as much publicity by making the AnvilSustainable tees organic. Instead, Anvil is choosing to support the small farms that will be instrumental in ensuring the ample supply of organic resources.

Read the whole story: Fast Company

Comments

[BannedNBoston]

Make shirts from hemp fiber.
6X more fiber than cotton
6X more BTUS than corn
8X more hemp diesel than canola
The seeds are the best turkey, chicken and pig feed going.

[RMankovitz]

T-Shirts made with recycled PET from plastic water bottles? Yikes!

Let's start with what we know about water bottles made with PET (polyethylene terephthalate), and then move on to T-Shirts.

The production of PET water bottles employs antimony trioxide as a catalyst. Antimony is a toxin similar to arsenic. It is known that the antimony in the plastic leaches into the water contained in the bottle. Voila - contaminated bottled water.

The amount of antimony leached into the water depends on the temperature history of the bottle, over which we have little control. For those interested in following this circus, use Google to search: "antimony water bottle".

Here are a few choice links:

http://www.polarisinstitute.org/ottawa_is_bottled_water_safe

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/press/news/news06/2601antime.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16470261

OK, now picture this. You are wearing a PET T-shirt on a hot day while sweating. Get the picture? One could argue that the antimony in the shirt can leach into your sweat and be absorbed by the skin. The heated shirt and skin could likely accelerate the process. Voila! A toxic T-shirt! Not my cup-of-T (pun intended).

Yes, I am assuming the antimony from the PET bottle will remain in the recycled garment. I consider this to be a valid assumption unless a study is performed to show otherwise.

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[RyKi]

This is not exactly new technology, companies such as Patagonia have been doing this for a while. Not to say that these products don't deserve all the press they can get.

[JamesR.]

I sure hope people wearing them aren't smokers.