The California based Brand, Marine Layer has collected over 70,000 worn tees from their customers, regardless of brand identification of the tees. The brand known for their laid-back, outdoor-friendly aesthetic has launched a series of new t-shirts that is made out of wastes sent in the form of old tees. CEO Michael Natenshon expressed, “This has been in the making for a long time. It wasn’t easy building the process and infrastructure to make this happen. Recycling clothes is not always as easy as it seems.”
Recycled fibers can lack the strength of the new ones and the process of separating blends requires expertise and experimentation. The Marine Layer team had been developing the required technologies for years before launching ‘ReSpun’.
The brand is accepting all kinds of materials, barring active wear. This is because, “That stretchy spandex is tough to break down. Instead, cut it up and use it to dry dishes. That stuff is like magic, as advised by the website. Blended fibers of polyester and cotton, which is the vast majority of tees on the market, pose a large enough challenge on their own. “We didn’t want to put out just a t-shirt, it needed to stand up to what we have in the shop already the same quality”, claimed the CEO.
The goal was to get 10,000 t-shirts, Natenshon explains. They hit that goal quickly with 25,000 shirts pouring in the first month.
The result is eight styles of tees, four for men’s and for women’s, now on sale on the Marine Layer site, that are made of 100 percent of recycled content, constituting each of 50 percent recycled cotton and 50 percent polyester.
