PM Modi wears jacket made from recycled plastic bottles

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at parliament sporting a jacket fashioned from recycled plastic bottles to promote sustainability.

When the Prime Minister arrived in the Rajya Sabha today, he opted to wear a sky-blue bandhgala jacket. PM Modi will probably respond to the motion of gratitude regarding the President’s speech in the Lok Sabha later in the day. The uniforms made from recycled plastic were introduced by the Prime Minister on Monday at the ongoing India Energy Week 2023 in Bengaluru as part of Indian Oil’s “Unbottled” campaign.

The circular economy is a part of every Indian’s lifestyle, and reduce, reuse, and recycle are ingrained in Indian culture, which PM Modi connected to India’s efforts for green growth and energy transition during the event. He said that programmes to turn recycled plastic bottles into uniforms will support Mission LiFE.

“These huge efforts of India towards green growth and energy transition also reflect our values. Circular economy, in a way, is a part of the lifestyle of every Indian. The mantra of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle has been ingrained in our values. Today, we got to see an example of this here. You have seen uniforms made by recycling plastic waste bottles. It does not lack anywhere as far as the world of fashion and beauty is concerned. The target of recycling 100 million such bottles every year will go a long way in protecting the environment,” PM Modi had said.

Guided by the vision of the Prime Minister to phase out single-use plastic, Indian Oil has adopted uniforms for retail customer attendants and LPG delivery personnel made from recycled polyester (rPET) & cotton.

Each set of uniforms of Indian Oil’s customer attendant shall support recycling of around 28 used PET bottles.

Indian Oil is taking this initiative further through ‘Unbottled’ – a brand for sustainable garments launched for merchandise made from recycled polyester. Under this brand, Indian Oil targets to meet the requirement of uniforms for the customer attendants of other Oil Marketing Companies, non-combat uniforms for the Army, uniforms/ dresses for Institutions & sales to retail customers.

At the COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had committed to an ambitious five-part “Panchamrit” pledge, including reaching 500 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity, to generate half of all energy requirements from renewables, to reduce emissions by 1 billion tons by 2030.

India also aims to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 45 per cent. Finally, India commits to net-zero emissions by 2070.

Notably, India banned several single-use plastics starting July 2022.
Single-use plastics are typically items that are discarded after being used only once and do not go through the recycling process.