Carpets in Ford EcoSport made from recycled plastic bottles

Ford is using recycled single-use plastic drink bottles to make the carpets of its EcoSport SUV.

Since Ford launched the EcoSport in 2012, it has recycled more than 650 million 500-millilitre bottles.

If laid end to end, this amount would stretch more than twice around the world, Ford says.

Since first using recycled plastic in Mondeo more than 20 years ago, Ford now recycles 1.2 billion 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,” said 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 in to 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.