Narrator: These filaments used to be plastic bottles, and they're being turned into polyester. The fabric makes up more than half of all of our clothing, and one company in India called Shree Renga can turn about 1.5 million plastic bottles into polyester in a single day.

Senthil: That is going to be almost more than tripled in the next couple of years.

Narrator: Turns out, there's plenty of appetite for it. More and more, fashion brands like Adidas, Nike, and Shein are trying to increase the amount of polyester made from recycled plastics in their lines, often marketing them as more sustainable.

But why is so much of what we wear made from plastic to begin with? And how do you turn a bottle into clothing?

The Shree Renga company spins about 25 metric tons of polyester on a daily basis. The founder, K Sankar, is proud of every filament his factory spins.

But it took him decades of trying to get here. I felt like doing something to the society by doing recycling.

Narrator: Today, he runs the business alongside his son, Senthil, who quit his job in IT to help his dad.

Senthil: I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I wanted to be an entrepreneur in India. Narrator: Globally, we produce about 600 million of these bottles every year, and most of them are not recycled.

In India, waste pickers collect and deposit them at sorting sites like this one, where workers crush and bale them for sale.

Every month, Shree Renga buys about 900 metric tons of trash from companies like this one.

But all it really wants is PET. That's short for polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most common types of plastic.

At Shree Renga's factory, the first step to getting it is separating the valuable bottles from the caps, labels, and glue.

Mixing in other plastics could ruin the final material, but getting to pure PET is pretty time-consuming.

Senthil: We have a lot of advanced sensing technologies, which are used to separate PET, PVC, all the other plastics.

Narrator: Bottle caps are usually made from polypropylene, a kind of plastic that Shree Renga doesn't recycle, so they sell them to another company that makes lead-acid battery cases.

And all of the dirt and sand they collect from washing the bottles is pressed with ash to make bricks that decorate the factory floor.

Then, machines crush the bottles into flakes. Bagged flakes are then loaded onto trucks and delivered to another part of the factory.

Here, they are crushed again and passed over a sieve shaker, a machine that sorts the flakes by size, making sure they're no larger than 14 millimeters.

Smaller particles falling to the shaker's bottom are used again to make PET pellets.

But the flakes still aren't 100% separated. After a quick rinse, machines transfer them into a float tank.

Here, the PET will sink, and other plastics can be skimmed off the top.

They're then washed 10 times to remove any remaining dirt and glue. Senthil: Nothing is wasted in this factory.

That water is again used back. Narrator: The plastic is rinsed one final time, leaving behind clear flakes, which are dried and loaded into these sacks.

Now, it's time to turn them into fiber. And PET is uniquely suited for this purpose.

It has long chains of molecules that hold tightly together, creating lightweight, flexible, and strong materials. The length of those molecular chains determines whether the plastic is used for things like bottles, packaging, or textiles.

Chemically, PET and polyester are the same thing.

Making fibers starts by melting the plastic flakes with colored pigments, a technique known as dope-dyeing. The combined goop is then pushed through a spinneret, a metal plate with hundreds of small holes that can be adjusted for thickness.

When it melts and comes out, it comes in the colored form.

We don't use a single drop of water. We don't use energy for our coloring process. Narrator: Shree Renga currently makes 200 different colors of fiber.

As they exit, the filaments cool and dry. After every use, the plates are cleaned using high-frequency sound waves, which create microscopic bubbles that collapse and remove anything stuck to the spinneret.

The fibers are then stretched using a series of rollers, which deposit them into these large buckets.

Shutting down and restarting these machines is energy-intensive and expensive, so they have to run nonstop throughout the day.

Senthil: If you have to stop, then it takes a long time for us to reboot again. Narrator: Workers weigh the drums and bring them into this area called the draw line.

Here, 60 to 70 barrels are simultaneously routed through a series of eyelets, pulling them into parallel strips.

Polyester tends to hold static electricity, so the fibers are dipped in a starch-based lubricant to avoid sticking together.

Another series of rollers makes them up to four times longer, and yet another set of heated rollers stabilizes the fiber into its stretched state.

This machine crimps the fibers, giving them a wavy pattern and making them easier to combine with other textiles like cotton.

The finished fibers travel to the top of this platform, where they are cut down to a manageable size.

Finally, they are compressed, baled, and shipped to another company for further processing. At Sri Kannattal Mills, the fibers are spun into yarns using a series of machines.

First, workers load them into a bale opener, which uses rollers and spiked drums to loosen the fiber.

They weigh the sheet before loading it into a carding machine.

It pulls the fiber over wire-covered cylinders that comb through tangles, creating a thin web that is then condensed into a loose rope called sliver.

These sliver strands are coiled into large cans. Workers attach them to machines that combine several of the ropes together.

Next, the slivers are run through something called a simplex machine. It uses a series of rollers rotating at different speeds to stretch the fibers and make them more parallel.

The result is a more compact and uniform rope known as roving, which is ideal for spinning.

Workers feed the roving through a spinner that twists it into yarn. Finally, the strands are ring-spun onto bobbins.

Senthil and his father used these cones to make their clothing, but before PET was ever woven into T-shirts, it started out as a lab experiment.

When scientists at the chemical company DuPont developed the first synthetic fibers in the early 20th century, they were celebrated as major scientific achievements that could replace silk and cotton.

Narrator: Before the breakthrough, the US imported over 90% of its silk from Japan, using it mostly to make stockings.

But all trades ceased during World War II, collapsing the silk market. After the war, nylon stockings became a cheap, popular substitute.

Narrator: And in the 1950s, polyester was built as a magical, man-made fabric that wouldn't wrinkle.

Narrator: In the 1970s, it became cheaper than cotton, and fashion brands embraced it.

The material was strong, flexible, easy to dye, resistant to heat and stains, and quick to dry.

In the 1980s, cotton was the world's most popular fiber. But over the next few decades, polyester came to dominate the industry and is expected to keep growing, with the majority of production outsourced to Southeast Asia.

The popularity was fueled by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, Zara, and Forever 21.

In 2020, the world produced enough polyester to fill about 2.5 million garbage trucks.

Less than 15% of that came from recycled material. And one study showed that a single truckload's worth of clothing goes into a landfill or incinerator every second.

To bring that stat down, more and more brands are working with recycled polyester made from plastic bottles, including Adidas, Nike, Zara, and even Shein.

In early 2024, more than 120 clothing companies pledged to increase their use of recycled polyester.

Shree Renga launched its own recycled clothing brand in 2021 called Ecoline.

Most pieces are made of 100% recycled polyester, but sometimes, they're mixed with cotton.

Senthil: So once the fiber was made, making yarns and fabrics and garments was just an extension. Narrator: Everything is still made in the same facilities.

Workers connect hundreds of bobbins to a machine that weaves the yarn into sheets of fabric, which then head to inspection.

Senthil: If there is some defect that is found, it'll be marked with a marker.

And once that marker is seen in the cutting section, they will cut that portion alone and keep it aside as waste.

That again gets recycled. Narrator: All of the fabrics they use are laid out, marked, and cut into various shapes for garments.

To add a design, Shree Renga uses a sublimation printer. And once the sheets are out, we place them into panels in our heat transfer machine.

Narrator: This device applies heat and pressure to transfer dyes directly onto the polyester. The company sells 400,000 garments a year and plans to triple production by 2026.

Senthil: We are boldly betting on this, expanding our capacities, thinking that the future is going to be sustainable fashion.

And we want to be well placed when that wave comes.

Narrator: In 2023, the family received a huge boost after India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, wore one of their vests, known as a sadri.

I was literally in tears. My product is worn by the prime minister of the country.

Something wonderful. Senthil: It's something to convince someone to wear something out of trash. And that we've been able to do with Ecoline.

Narrator: Clothes made from recycled polyester are often advertised as good for the environment, but they still come with an impact.

Washing any synthetic fiber can introduce microplastics less than 5 millimeters in length into our waterways. Some studies suggest that synthetic fibers contribute more than a third of all microplastics in the ocean.

And if it ends up in a landfill, river, or ocean, it won't break down.

To top it off, recycling polyester isn't as easy as recycling a plastic bottle.

Polyester is often mixed with things like cotton, spandex, chemicals, and dyes that must be separated before recycling.

The cheapest and simplest method for recycling clothing involves shredding it, but that creates shorter fibers that need to be blended with virgin ones to make new clothes.

So they are typically downcycled into carpets and stuffing for insulation. In 2020, a research institute in Hong Kong started experimenting with fiber-to-fiber recycling.

It partnered with H&M to make this machine, which turns used clothes into new ones in about three days.

First, a technician like Emily Shao examines the garment. Emily: So today we will recycle an old garment.

Narrator: This ozone chamber sanitizes the fabric in about an hour. Then, Emily removes the buttons, labels, and zippers and cuts the garment so the fabric is easy to work with.

The shredder strips the bits of cloth down further.

Emily: And then I will take out the opened fabrics. Narrator: But this part of the process does require some new materials.

Emily: So we will add some virgin fibers into the yarn to make it stronger. Narrator: Another machine mixes that cotton with a recycled skirt.

Emily then rolls the mixed fibers into clumps and feeds them into a machine that turns them into what's called a fiber web.

The fiber web gets bundled into these snakelike slivers. The slivers are then spun into ply yarn, the building blocks for any new garment.

Finally, a machine knits a new sweater based on a computer design. Shoppers pay about $65 to recycle clothing here.

How do we help consumers think about their clothes differently? Well, that's one of the reasons why we have a glass box doing research in a shopping mall.

Narrator: The H&M Foundation partnered with the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. That investment allowed the company to license and install the technology at one of its stores in Stockholm, where the company's headquartered.

Here, shoppers pay only $18 to see the recycling process in action. That's about the price of a new pair of the brand's sweatpants.

Virginia: That's how it comes out. And then this is the only part that has to be removed. Narrator: Virginia, the technician, trims the extra yarn, and the garment is ready to go.

It seems like a perfect solution, but it takes three days to recycle just one garment.

A factory like this that can recycle thousands of tons of clothes a day doesn't exist yet. But H&M says that eventually, this kind of technology could be a global solution for textile waste.

Pascal: The holy grail is garment-to-garment recycling, and that's, for me, where today most of our investment is going.

Narrator: And other large companies are making similar bets.

Gap and Zara's parent company, Inditex, recently made major investments in an American company called Ambercycle.

The company developed a chemical process to separate polyester from dyes and other fabrics, eliminating the need for virgin materials.

How 1.5 Million Plastic Bottles Are Turned Into Clothing Every Day | World Wide Waste

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How 1.5 Million Plastic Bottles Are Turned Into Clothing Every Day | World Wide Waste

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