Closing the Loop with EcoVerde™: How 100 % Recycled Threads Power Truly Circular Garments

Big shirts. Small socks. Every piece of cloth needs tiny strings that keep the parts together.
Most times, those strings come from brand-new plastic chips. That fresh chip is born inside oil fields far away, and the planet sighs when it sees more drilling.
EcoVerde™ says “no thank you.”
This thread line is spun from 100 % recycled bottle flakes and old cone waste. It tries to make a circle, not a straight throw-away line.

1. Why circles beat straight lines

Think of a crayon. Draw a long arrow that goes off the page—that is today’s fashion. Raw stuff in, trash out.
Now draw a loop like a merry-go-round. Nothing falls off. That is a circular design.
When fabric, buttons, and even the sewing thread all share the same family (polyester (like trilobal polyester thread) in this case), a recycling plant can grind, wash, melt, and spin again without sorting headaches.
Mixed seams break the loop; mono-material seams glue it back. EcoVerde™ thread speaks the same language as rPET fabric, so grinders smile.

2. How bottles turn into strong yarn

1. Collect. Water bottles tossed in the bin get bailed.
2. Crunch. Bale smashed into little clear snow called flakes.
3. Clean. A hot bath removes cola smell and mud bits.
4. Melt & pull. Flakes melt like sugar syrup, then the spinneret pulls long, shiny spaghetti.
5. Twist. Many filaments twist, dance, and hug into one tough cord—sewing thread cone is ready.

The same steps happen again when the old garment comes home to the recycler. Loop closes, story restarts.

3. Earth numbers in easy words

Making one kilogram of fresh polyester spits out about 6½ kilograms of CO₂.
Using bottle waste cuts that number near half. Some studies say even lower.
Water use shrinks big too ’cause oil refineries gulp lots of it.
So each spool of EcoVerde™ takes lighter footprint steps than a twin made from virgin chip.

Imagine a T-shirt uses four grams of thread. Seems tiny. But a million tees need four tons of yarn. Change those four tons to recycled, and you stop the weight of 20 big cars’ worth of carbon from floating up. Little lines count a lot.

4. Soft feel, hard facts

Often folk worry: “Recycled breaks easily, right?” Nope.
Lab pull tests show strength sits right beside virgin cousin.
Color shade range? Over 150 hues, plus dope-dyed black that hides fade.
Wash cycles? 50 domestic washes, still holds.
Needle jam? Less than 0.2 % break on high-speed lock-stitch machines when the tension is set properly.

So brands swap in without a retool bill. Seam still passes quality check, yet planet gets breather.

5. Mistakes seams make and how EcoVerde™ fixes

• Landfill locks: Old poly thread stuck in a cotton shirt stops compost. Using rPET on rPET cloth avoids this trouble.
• Color bleed: Cheap reclaimed yarn sometimes loses dye. EcoVerde™ uses food-grade deep cleansing, dye-hold tight.
• Static shock: Recycled fibre may carry more static. Antistatic spin finish added, so sparks are gone.

Small tweak, big save.

6. Sewing-floor playbook

Sentence big: Always store cones in a dry box, a wet area can swell the fibre finish and tension jump, then the needle heat grows too much and pops the thread mid-run, causing an angry operator.
Next line small: Keep room 45 % RH.
Use a size 120 needle for 60 tex thread.
Drop tension one notch compared with virgin spool; recycled has a tiny bit more drag.
Run the first 100 stitches slowly, then floor speed up. Training easy.

7. Brand story tag

Garment hangtag may read:

“Stitched with 100 % recycled EcoVerde™ thread.
One shirt, one family of fibre, one easy path back to new cloth.”

Add a QR code that shows the bottle-to-thread video; kids love spinneret spaghetti.

8. Price chat in the lunchroom words

Cone price sits maybe 10 % higher than virgin today, but the extra cost hides quick:

• Carbon tax credit or ESG score climbs.
• No multi-material seam means cheaper recycling later.
• Social-media boost drives faster sell-out.

So penny more at sewing turns to rupee gain at checkout.

9. Hurdles still hopping

Bottle supply goes up and down with drink sales.
Clear PET easy, but green PET rare—so bright lime thread tough.
Dyeing dark red on rPET may need a double pass.
Coats lab is working on a low-energy disperse dye that sticks faster; solution soon.

10. Future loop wider

Engineers are testing EcoVerde™ PF, a partially bio-PET plus post-consumer mix.
Also, pilot for mono-material zips using the same recycled sewing thread in tape and teeth—full garment, one polymer.
By 2030 target is 100 % of Coats apparel thread volume from preferred or closed-loop feed. The wheel keeps turning.

Quick child-size recap

Bottle → flake → melt → string → sew → wear → collect → melt again.
Round and round, no trash mountain.
EcoVerde™ thread makes that circle spin smoothly.

Final stitch

Little seams hide big power.
Swap to EcoVerde™ and a garment steps into a real circle, not just a half circle.
No oil dug, no mix mess, easy to recycle tomorrow.
Next needle you thread could pull planet the right way—light tug, circle complete, future brighter.