If you are tuned in to the Australian Open this season, there's little chance you would have missed star players like Roger Federer and Serena Williams. But have you paid attention to the ball boys, girls and the courstside statisticians, dressed in shades of green and blue?
They are wearing T-shirts made in Tirupur near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.
But that's not what is special about it - these shirts are made from recycled PET bottles. At NC John & Sons in Tirupur, a total of 1,88,708 used PET bottles have been used to make 25,000 garments for the Australian Open.
For Alexander, whose company has been making sustainable apparel since 2007, this is business as usual. But he does add that he is happy that their work has put them in the spotlight.
“We got the order from Tennis Australia through one of our customers in Australia,” he explains, adding that his company has been chiefly exporting garments to the US and the UK. “The team visited us in November last year to ensure that the entire process was green.”
In fact, 40% of the power consumed is from wind and solar energy.
