Today, we are on a planet that heavily uses plastics bottles on a daily basis since they are produced in 1975. Each day, almost 100 million of plastic bottles are used around the world. Yet only 15% of them will be recycled and brought back to life. The rest of them would be buried underground undecomposed for centuries. Not to mention it takes millions of years to reproduce the oil we waste on producing plastic bottles. Thus, how to deal with the excessive bottle waste becomes an urgent issue to us.
Photo courtesy: wikipedia July. 25, 2016 https://goo.gl/qNMzli
Certainly, recycling is the very solution that comes to our minds when dealing with plastic waste. But how do we make use of those recycled bottles? In common scenario, the bottles will be melted and remolded into different forms of containers or package material. A social enterprise, however, has a different vision of using them. They set a goal to reuse those bottles to produce polyester blankets for disaster relief and send them to the needs in 32 countries.
Photo courtesy: DA.AI Technology Co July. 25, 2016 www.daait.com/
The idea of turning recycled bottles to blankets originates from Master Cheng Yen, the founder of world's largest Buddhist charity - TZU CHI. With knowing plastic bottles and polyester fabric are by-products of oil-extracting, Cheng Yen suggests if they can turn bottles into blankets to reduce the excessive bottles and the waste of oil. The suggestion has made five industrialists in TZU CHI gather together and form a social enterprise, DA AI Technology, which devotes in recycling, reusing the waste, and reducing the consumption of resources and pollution.
Photo courtesy: DA.AI Technology Co July. 25, 2016 www.daait.com/
DA AI uses about 58 recycled bottles to make a polyester blanket. The production of a blanket also reduces 261 g carbon emissions, and saves 30 ml of oil and 5.6 liters of water.
Photo courtesy: DA.AI Technology Co July. 25, 2016 www.daait.com/
The bottles come from over 4500 TZU CHI’s recycling stations which are staffed by over 62,000 volunteers. They separate PET bottles by color, remove caps and cap rings, and flatten and package the bottles. The bottles are then delivered to factories where they are shredded, rinsed, and made into polyester resin. Then the resin is spun into yarn and woven into light and soft polyester fabric, which is ready to be made into blankets.
Photo courtesy: DA.AI Technology Co July. 25, 2016 www.daait.com/
So far DA AI has already sent 851,490 blankets to the needs in 32 countries and reused 250 million of bottles each year. They also donate all their revenue back to TZU CHI foundation to help more people in need around the world. By combing charity with eco-friendliness, they truly conduct their core value of coexisting with the Earth and set an example for social enterprise.
Photo courtesy: DA.AI Technology Co July. 25, 2016 www.daait.com/
Reference: http://goo.gl/jltknJ