REPREVE® is Ford’s plan for a cleaner environment. About 2 million post-consumer plastic bottles are planned to be used as the seat fabric in the new Focus Electric and other new vehicles for the next model year.REPREVE it is a polyfabric made from a hybrid blend of recycled PET bottles and post-consumer waste and is used for the production of car seats. 22 recycled PET bottles are necesary to made fabric for seats in each Focus Electric, the first vehicle with interior made by using 100 percent clean technology.
“Ford is committed to delivering vehicles with leading fuel efficiency while targeting at least 25 percent clean technology in interior materials across our lineup,” says Carol Kordich, lead designer of Sustainable Materials for Ford. “The Focus Electric highlights this commitment as Ford’s first gas-free vehicle, and the first in the automotive industry to use branded REPREVE.”
“After decades of education, the United States PET bottle recycling rate is only at 29 percent, about half the rate of Europe,” said Roger Berrier, president and COO of Unifi Inc. (NYSE: UFI). “We hope this recycling initiative with Ford will help raise visibility around the importance of recycling with a goal to drive recycling rates to 100 percent, diverting millions of plastic bottles from entering the waste stream and potentially back into REPREVE-branded fibers.”
Bottles will be collected by the company at events throughout the year, for example during North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) on Jan. 9-10 and the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Jan. 10-13.
Seat made from plastics bottles are another examples of interior part made from recycled material by Ford. The upcoming Ford Escape will be equiped with a carpet made from recycled 20-ounce plastic bottles. Each carpet amounts to 25 bottles.
