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Shops lure parents with schoolwear made from recycled bottles

After several years of competing on price, high-street stores have gone green in their battle to attract parents looking to buy next year's school uniforms.

This week, Marks & Spencer and British Home Stores announced they would each be selling a range of schoolwear made from recycled plastic bottles.

The bottles have been chopped up into flakes, melted and then made into a polyester yarn, which is woven into cloth.

The end result is a range of fleeces, polo shirts, trousers and skirts that will go on sale in the summer and apparently don't melt under an iron.

The recycling process behind M&S' range takes place in Taiwan and the 100 percent recycled polyester is made from bottles that have been sourced locally. An average of seven bottles is needed to produce each child's fleece.

A spokeswoman for M&S said that recycled polyester was hard to source and as a result prices for the clothes were "slightly higher" than for the rest of the retailer's school range.

However, with a polo shirt costing from ?3 (US$5.9), and for the youngest children, a whole uniform available for less than ?20, the recycled fabric uniforms are not prohibitively expensive.

The range will be on sale from August in 20 stores around the country and on the retailer's Web site. It also includes Fairtrade cotton shirts for girls and boys aged between 3 and 16.

The move to use recycled polyester is part of M&S' Plan A commitment to ensuring materials are sourced sustainable and follows the launch of a men's fleece made with the same fabric.

"We're constantly looking at ways to give our customers the most innovative, best value and highest quality schoolwear on the high street," said Julian Kilmartin, the director of menswear and boyswear. "Using recycled polyester is another way that we're doing this."

Kilmartin said the polyester was of the same quality as that used in the rest of retailer's schoolwear range.

BHS' range is priced from ?3.50 for a polo shirt and from ?7 for fleeces and trousers.

It is using plastic bottles collected in Europe and says it

takes 10 bottles to make its "greenfleece."

Fabric made from 100 percent recycled polyester has been used for years in the outdoor clothing market.

The US firm Patagonia has used recycled and recyclable polyester in fleeces since 1993. It estimates that by last year it had saved 92 million plastic bottles from landfill sites and incinerators.

The school uniform market has been competitive in recent years, with retailers trying to undercut each other on prices. But last month, the production of Asda's below ?10 uniform was called into question by anti-poverty campaigners, who said the low price suggested workers were being exploited.

Asda insisted its George uniform was "ethically" sourced from factories that were regularly audited. But War on Want said it feared cheap labor was being used to make the garments.
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