Ford turns plastic bottles into carpets

Ford has found a clever way of reusing millions of plastic bottles. Each EcoSport SUV that the company produces is fitted with carpets made using 470 single-use plastic drink bottles.

And since Ford launched the EcoSport globally in 2012, it has provided a new lease of life for more than 650 million 500-millilitre bottles, and if laid end to end, would stretch more than twice around the world. 

Since first using recycled plastic in Mondeo more than 20 years ago, Ford now recycles 1.2b bottles globally per year.

“Consumers have a hugely increased awareness of the harm that simply discarding plastic can do – but we have long been on a mission to increase the proportion of recycled and renewable materials that are used in every new car we make,” says Tony Weatherhead, materials engineer, Ford Motor Company. 

Turning plastic into car carpets first involves shredding both the bottles and their caps into tiny flakes.

These are then heated to 260°C and melted down before being formed into fibres the width of a single human hair. Those fibres are spun into a yarn by twisting multiple fibres together – and it is this material that is woven into carpets.

In Europe as a whole, only 30 per cent of plastic waste is recycled.