3 July 2010 | Angeline Albert
Arsenal football club’s home shirts and shorts for the 2010-11 season will be made entirely from plastic water bottles diverted from landfill.
To make the shirts and shorts, Nike uses discarded water bottles destined for landfill in Japan and Taiwan. Each shirt is made up of recycled polyester from eight plastic bottles. The bottles are cleaned, chopped into flakes and melted down into a yarn that is spun for the fabric.
The improved Nike Dri-Fit fabric is 13 per cent lighter than previous kits. The same process is used by Nike to produce recycled kits for other football clubs including Brazil, FC Barcelona, Inter Milan and Manchester United.
Use of recycled polyester across its new range of club kits means Nike has reused nearly 13 million plastic water bottles, a total of around 254 tonnes of polyester waste.
Arsenal player Theo Walcott said: “The colours are very traditional, it feels nice and it’s made from recycled plastic bottles so what more can you ask for?”
