Each pair of jeans under the WasteLess features include a minimum of 20% post-consumer recycled content – on average, eight 12 to 20-ounce bottles – utilising in total more than 3.5 million post-consumer bottles.

Levi’s is sourcing the PET material, which includes brown beer bottles, green soda bottles, clear water bottles and black food trays, through various US municipal recycling collection schemes.

Once reprocessed, the plastics are made into a polyester fibre and blended with cotton fibre before being woven with traditional cotton yarn by Cone Denim to create the denim.

Levi’s global president James Curleigh said that the philosophy behind the WasteLess creation was not just to reduce environmental impact, but to leave a net positive legacy.

“From the beginning, we have designed our products with purpose and intent. By adding value to waste, we hope to change the way people think about recycling, ultimately incentivising them to do more of it,” he said.

The WasteLess collection is the latest chapter in the company’s commitment to doing more with less. In 2009, the company introduced ‘A Care Tag for our Planet’ – an initiative to educate consumers on how to clean their clothes with less environmental impact.

This initiative was followed up by the development of WaterLess, a pioneering finishing technique designed to reduce the use of water in the finishing process by up to 96%. This year, the WaterLess collection saved over 360 million litres of water.

Maxine Perella

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