Music star helps to turn ocean waste into jeans

Pharrell Williams, a music star and fashion designer, has announced a partnership with designer denim label G-Star RAW to create jeans out of plastic waste taken from the world's oceans.


The new initiative is called ‘Raw for the Oceans’ and it aims to tackle the problem of plastic litter filling up in the world’s oceans.

Speaking about the initiative on his promotional video, he said: “Dear human beings, we take vacation by the oceans, we bathe in the oceans and we eat from the oceans. But few of us think about the oceans beyond from what we want from it! The oceans need us as they are filling up with plastic …”

Williams told the Wall Street Journal: “I’m just playing my little part because each drop counts. I’m happy to be a participant.”

The initiative will collect plastic litter from the oceans and process it into yarn and make jeans. At a launch event at New York Fashion Week, Williams explained that he had been trying to learn more about the fashion industry for some time, trailing executives and “getting them coffee.” But this collaboration, he said, was the first that really “made sense” for him to get involved in.

Williams intends his Raw for the Oceans collection to be available by 15 August.

Liz Gyekye

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