▲ Photo: Jeju Province Development Corporation

The Jeju Samdasoo PET bottles are reborn as eco-friendly fashion items.

In celebration of Environment Day (June 5th), Jeju Samdasoo released an eco-friendly fashion item, Pleats Mama Jeju Edition, made from Jeju’s plastic bottles recycled into regenerated fiber.

The product was created as part of the “REGEN JEJU” project to circulate Jeju’s local resources, organized by Jeju Province, Jeju Province Development Corporation, Hyosung TNC, and Pleats Mama. This is the first time that PET bottles collected in Korea are released as a product.

▲ Photo: Jeju Province Development Corporation

The Pleats Mama Jeju Edition consists of four items: summer woven bags, shopper bags, net bags, and nano bags. They represent Jeju’s local identity, using the colors derived from the citrus, sea, Bijarim forest, and basalt that symbolize Jeju.

The project was made possible through a collaboration between Jeju Province Development Corporation, Hyosung TNC, and Pleats Mama. When the plastic bottles collected by JPDC are supplied, Hyosung TNC regenerates the plastic bottles into high-quality long fibers. These fibers are then produced into eco-friendly fashion items by Pleats Mama, an environmentally conscious fashion startup.

▲ Photo: Jeju Province Development Corporation

For this project, JPDC established a separate facility for collecting transparent PET bottles in 71 recycling help centers in the province with the non-profit organization Jejuin Social Cooperative in January and established a system for the production of recycled raw materials.

An official from JPDC said, “Pleats Mama Jeju Edition shows the importance and possibility of resource circulation.” They explained, “JPDC is striving to minimize the impact on the environment in all processes from production to recycling of our products.”

Meanwhile, JPDC is converting Samdasoo PET bottles into colorless bottles made of a single material and using the synthetic resin material with a specific gravity of less than 1 to make labels and bottle caps. In 2018, a thermal-alkaline adhesive was applied to make it easier to remove labels. Last year, a label separation guide was introduced on the 500 ml product, which recently received an excellent recycling grade in the evaluation of packaging material and structure.