Don’t worry, bro, that dude from the Black Eyed Peas is going to make us into board shorts.
Since we use about 50 billion plastic water bottles a year, it would kind of behoove us to maybe do something useful with them. Which is why Will.i.am (of the Black Eyed Peas) and Coca-Cola (of the thing you drink when you’re hungover) have come up with an environmental initiative called Ekocycle to turn these bottles into clothes and household products, rather than just shit that floats in the ocean and kills stuff.
Ekocycle’s initial partners were the Beats by Dre line of headphones (which are pretty good, I have tried them) and New Era caps (which I have never seen before but actually there’s some stuff here I might buy). That was back in July — remember, when we were all really hot, back before we knew there were going to be fucking tornadoes in the Western Sierra? Anyway, the reason that Ekocycle is all excited today is that four other companies have hooked up with it in its let’s-do-something-with-these-bottles quest. Those companies are Case-Mate, Levi Strauss & Company, MCM, and RVCA, who make stuff like iPhone cases, jeans, luggage, and board shorts respectively.
Levi’s alone plans on using 3.5 million bottles for its new recycled denim project. So there are about … well, there are still about 49,965,000 bottles left. Hey, Will.i.am — less Oprah, more recycling!
