It’s easy to down a bottle of water on a hot summer’s day. Getting rid of it is the hard part. Most toss it in the trash. But we can’t make these vessels go away. Plastic items don’t simply decompose. They can lie in landfills for hundreds of years – unless Gina Tarboton gets a hold of them. In this trendsetter's hands, plastic is given a new life as stylish boardshorts.
Tarboton had long been seeking sustainable fabrics for her fashion brand, GiLo Lifestyle. Distraught by the high levels of pollution, she and her business partner Loren Dyer decided to create clothing made from plastic bottles. Picked from landfills, beaches, and oceans in countries with the highest rates of plastic waste, like China and India, the bottles undergo thorough cleaning before being broken down into flakes. These are processed into pure plastic pellets, which are stretched out into a yarn to make fabric. With a sprinkling of spandex added for stretch, the result is a material made of 92% recycled plastic. After being printed in bright patterns, it’s sewn into boardshorts and lifestyle shorts.
Dressed in one of Tarboton’s creations, beachgoers and fashionistas aren’t dressed to kill, but to protect the planet. “When I see people wearing my clothing, I feel proud that I can produce something beautiful, sustainable, and am able to create a positive change in the way people buy fashion,” Tarboton says. When we act consciously, we can shift trends towards a better tomorrow.
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