What is EcoViz? Eco-friendly Hi-Vis Workwear

What is EcoViz? At Rapid Fire Supplies we have recently expanded our range of eco-friendly safety products. Now introducing LEO’s EcoViz hi-vis range. EcoViz is high visibility (hi-vis) workwear with a sustainable twist. Why should hi-vis be eco-friendly? An estimate of £140 million pounds worth of clothing ends up in landfills every year (traid.org.uk, 2018). In addition to this, there is a list of staggering facts: The annual carbon footprint of an average household’s newly bought clothing (along with the washing and cleaning of its clothes) is estimated to be equivalent to the: -Carbon emissions from driving an average modern car for 6,000 miles -Water required to fill over 1,000 bathtubs -Weight of over 100 pairs of jeans Above all it is not surprising that the clothing industry is one of the biggest contributors to pollution in the world. However, it is not all bleak! New ways of creating clothing that are less impactful to the environment are arising – thanks to creative people, such as the team at LEO. To help combat this huge amount of waste, LEO have released their line of eco-conscious hi-viz workwear, EcoViz. Environmentally friendly, high visibility clothing from LEO workwear is the industry’s leading brand. Only recycled or sustainably sourced materials create the EcoViz hi-vis range. All EcoViz hi-vis products meet or exceed the requirements of EN ISO 20471 (the EU standards for hi-vis workwear). How are EcoViz Clothes made? Currently there are two ways to create an EcoViz hi-vis garment. Firstly, recycled plastic water bottles. 1. Shredding removes any liquid left inside the bottles. 2. Clear and coloured plastic is separated. 3. Washing cleans the clear plastic. 4. Rotating ovens dry it for around 10 hours. 5. Melting turns the plastic into a liquid form. 6. The liquid plastic passes through a rapidly cooling sieve. 7. This turns it into strings. 8. Breaking up the strings makes them into a material resembling cotton wool. 9. Machinery brushes it together. This makes all the fibres point in the same direction. 10. This brushing pressure turns it into thread. 12. Spinning by a mechanical loom turns the thread into sheets. 13. After that dying, tailoring turns the sheets into clothing such as EcoViz hi-vis! On the other hand there’s the option to use recycled old garments to make EcoViz hi-vis products. The process for recycling clothes is slightly more complicated at the beginning. Due to the fact that sorting out a mixture of different fabrics, materials and colours takes more time. However, the rest of the journey is not that dissimilar to the plastic water bottle’s. Similarly, shredding breaks down the clothing into raw polyester. Then, polymerisation (combining singular polymers with others) transforms it into polyester fibres. Spinning turns the fibres into strong threads. After that the looming process makes sheets from the fibres. The final step is to send the sheets to the fashion industry. Here dying, cutting, tailoring and styling transforms the sheets to become a chosen garment – for example a hi-vis vest. Positive impacts By using the above methods to create the EcoViz range LEO have already had a dramatically positive environmental impact. In short they have: -Saved enough energy to power 24 homes for a year. -Saved as much CO2 as planting 7.5k trees. -Stopped 350,000 plastic water bottles from becoming landfill. In conclusion, developments to LEO’s range are continuing each year. Look out for the arrival of new products in our EcoViz hi-vis range, some will feature bamboo! Keep your eyes peeled for that one!

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