DEARBORN, MICH. (Jan. 9 1:10 p.m. ET) — About 2 million plastic bottles will be used in the 2012 Ford Focus Electric and future Ford Motor Co. vehicles.
Each Ford Focus Electric contains fabrics made from about 22 recycled PET bottles, manufactured by Unifi Inc. and its Repreve brand of recycled fibers, according to a news release.
“After decades of education, the United States PET bottle recycling rate is only at 29 percent, about half the rate of Europe,” Roger Berrier, president and chief operating officer of Unifi, said in a statement. “We hope this recycling initiative with Ford will help raise visibility around the importance of recycling with a goal to drive recycling rates to 100 percent, diverting millions of plastic bottles from entering the waste stream and potentially back into Repreve-branded fibers.”
Unifi's Repreve seat fabric is a polyester fiber made from recycled materials, including post-industrial fiber waste and post-consumer waste such as PET bottles.
Ford and Greensboro, N.C.-based Unifi also will be collecting bottles for the vehicles this month during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Ford also uses PET in its 2012 Escape vehicles.
