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Once your recycling has been picked up by the local refuse collection it is dropped off at the bottle recycling centre. The first stage is shredding. When a bottle is thrown away often a small amount of liquid remains inside. Shredding all the bottles releases the unwanted liquid so it doesn’t affect the quality of the plastic.

The shredded bottles are then wrapped in cellophane and baled up ready to be shipped around the world. Plastic waste is a valuable commodity in the textile industry. Sorting separates the clear plastic from the coloured. Clear plastic can be made into white clothes or material that can be dyed so it’s very valuable.

Most plastic bottles have coloured lids and stickers on them. These need to be removed to make sure that the resulting plastic is colourless. The bottles head to baths, where the coloured caps, made of a different plastic, floats so a worker can strain them off the top. There is a separate bath for the stickers but the workers must be careful as it uses corrosive caustic soda, which is very bad for the skin but very good at removing labels.

After being washed a pile of clear plastic shreds remain, but they're very wet. The shreds are mixed with more light coloured plastics and sent to the dryers. The plastic spends about ten hours in rotating drums slowly drying out. The plastic is then released from the drums into large containers.

It’s very hard to weave cloth from bits and pieces, so another step is needed. The mixture is sent through a rotating screw where it is heated to 270°C. This melts the plastic into lengths, but to make cloth thread is needed.

The liquid plastic is forced through a sieve and emerges as long strands which are collected in a container below. It is now thread, but it isn’t strong enough to make cloth yet. First, it is combined and stretched several times while being heated. This bonds the fibres together.

It takes a long time to produce this material, but the next part of the process is to tear it apart again. The fluff that emerges is the raw substance needed to make polyester. However, that takes place in another factory. So, it is baled up again and sent on. It looks like cotton wool but it’s an entirely man-made substance.

The next machine scrapes it all into a very rough cloth ready to be carded. Carding is where the bonded fibres are brushed together, so they all lie in a similar direction which strengthens the material.

The sheets of polyester felt that emerge are now ready to be turned into thread. Machines spin it into mile after mile of pure polyester which is collected on bobbins. A loom at the centre draws in thousands of threads and weaves a new sheet of polyester.

To give it a smoother feel a series of steel brushes catch and tear the fibres. The shredded surface gives the material a soft, furry feel making it soft to the touch. The polyester fabric is now marked up, cut out and sewn together into clothing.