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W Hotels teams up with will.i.am to make bed sheets out of recycled plastic

• By  Henry Dsouza
• April 23, 2015

W Hotels Worldwide has announced a new partnership with global music artist and entrepreneur will.i.am and Coca-Cola to shake up the hotel industry.

The partners will bring the EKOCYCLE brand to W Hotel rooms around the world by re-making their beds with new bed sheets which are made in part with rPET (polyester partially made using recycled plastic). Rolling out into W Hotels in North America first with global properties to follow, each king size sheet set will use around 31 recycled, 20 oz. plastic bottles.

In a statement, W Hotels said, “The result is bedding that is as luxurious as it is environmentally conscious, ensuring that guests continue to have the same incredibly comfortable sleep they have come to expect from a night in a W Hotel bed. “Guests can rest assured that they won’t feel a difference, as the more sustainable sheets are made using the same high quality process as the W brand’s current bedding, with the only difference being the use of recycled polyester instead of new polyester.”

The collaboration will also see further plastic recycling, with a new mobile charger and accessory bedside valet, a “multi-tasking USB charging device that also acts as a jewelry/watch stand and an alarm clock” developed by Miniwiz, an engineering firm from Taipei focused exclusively on post-consumer recycled material design applications.

“W guests want to live a stylish, more sustainable lifestyle and this partnership is a way to allow them to do so when they are on the road,” said Sarah Doyle, global brand director of W Hotels Worldwide. “Working with will.i.am and Coca-Cola’s EKOCYCLE brand allows us to ‘change’ our sheets, reset our alarm clocks and pledge to make a difference one W Hotel stay at a time.”

Embedded in the ethos that “waste is only waste if we waste it,” the idea for EKOCYCLE was born after will.i.am was inspired to turn waste left behind at a Black Eyed Peas gig into recycled sought-after objects and joined forces with Coca-Cola. EKOCYCLE has a simple ambition: work with iconic brands to help consumers recognise that items they consider waste today can live on as brand new lifestyle products they can use tomorrow.

Textile Excellence