Not all recycling is boring, some results of recycling are wearable. Follow the trail of a simple Poland Spring water bottle as it goes from a bead of No. 1 plastic to an L.L. Bean fleece jacket.

– Resin beads arrive by truck and are transported into the Poland Spring bottling plant in Hollis, Maine through a silo.

– The beads are heated and blown into test tube-like “pre-forms.”

– The pre-forms are sent down an assembly line and divided. Some are then shipped to the company’s Poland, Maine plant to be molded, and the rest are molded in Hollis into bottles.

– The bottles are then filled with water, packaged, organized, and fork-lifted onto delivery trucks.

– The trucks take the bottled water to distribution centers, like Cosco. Distributors then sell the product to stores.

– Consumers who recycle bring them to their local transfer station or redemption center.

– Bottles are sent to be compacted at a recycling center which then sells it to one of several processing companies in New York or North Carolina. The raw plastic is then turned into a “fluff” material.

– The processing companies chip it down to fibers, reheat it, and then reshape it into other products.

– The products are then sold to various industries, such as packaging, carpeting, furniture and clothing companies such as Polartec LLC, formerly known as Malden Mills Industries in Lawrence, Mass. which was the first to use the recycled plastic fluff to make fabric. Polartec LLC then sells its fabric to outfitters such as L.L. Bean in Maine.