The materials our backpacks are made of

All ergobag backpacks are produced with materials made entirely from recycled PET bottles. But how are such bottles made into the material for a school backpack?

Sustainable, more sustainable, ergobag

What actually happens to empty PET bottles? In Germany we have the deposit system – we take our empty bottles back to the shop where they are crushed in the machine and then reprocessed. In countries with no deposit system, however, they land in the trash or even in the sea! We care very much about our environment so we thought why don't we simply have the materials for our school backpacks made from PET bottles? No sooner said than done: PET bottles are collected, recycled and processed into textiles for backpacks. So the trash is turned back to account – in 2012 a new use was found for over 15 million bottles in this way, making a contribution to the reduction of global environmental pollution.

From bottle to bag

But how is a plastic bottle turned into the material to make a school backpack? Well, the PET bottles are collected, washed and made into small pellets of more or less the same size. The PET pellets are melted down so that the resulting twine will be of an even consistency. Now it can be made into a thread which is wound onto a bobbin and then used to weave the fabric! The next step is to apply the colors and patterns to the finished fabric. The pattern produced by our designer crew has been printed on paper first. Two heated rollers, one covered with the fabric and the other with the paper, then press down and apply the design. The big rolls of fabric then go to the cutting section.

Good in more ways than one

There is another advantage in working with used PET bottles in that their reprocessing is already conserving our natural resources during the production process because of the reduced consumption of water and the decrease in CO2 emissions. So this also saves unnecessary impact on the environment in the manufacturing process. The reprocessing of PET in the production process (upcycling) also means a reduction in the consumption of non-renewable resources in that less crude oil is used for the backpack production. So PET recycling is good in two ways: there is less trash in the environment and a lower consumption of natural resources in its reprocessing to the finished backpack. Bags at the ready... steady... go!