Here at The Flag Shop, we aren’t great at sticking to the status quo – it gets boring. I mean, we love flags and banners – we really do – it’s just that sometimes we like to branch out a bit. Sometimes this means adding new products to our catalog, but sometimes it means finding a fabric no one else uses and then making it our own.
Echotex
Of course, we’re talking about Echotex – our 100% recycled banner fabric. Back when the Olympics were just in the planning stages here in Vancouver, Susan got it into her head to do something totally new and bring in a “green” flag and banner textile. Now, Susan is known as a super-sleuth for finding suppliers, but even so, she couldn’t find anyone offering recycled fabric for printing banners. Of course, that wouldn’t do. After searching around, she found someone who could manufacture the fabric she wanted and Echotex was born.
Originally Echotex was made of a mix of 80% pre-consumer and 20% post-consumer waste. The pre-consumer bits are things like scrap polyester from the cutting floors of other textile plants and the post-consumer items are recycled plastic bottles. After a recent re-certification (and who doesn’t like certificates), the mix is now 35% post-consumer and 65% pre-consumer waste – so more plastic bottles are in the mix and not in the landfill!