Designer believes hangers are 'fashion industry's plastic straw'

Fashion designer Roland Mouret has developed a recyclable clothes hanger in an attempt to end the use of plastic ones as he believes plastic hangers are the "plastic straw" of the fashion industry.

These hangers made out of 80 per cent recycled plastic recovered from the sea and 20 per cent recyclable plastic also feature aluminium hooks.

Current plastic hangers include a combination of up to seven different plastics as well as metal, and many hangers end up in landfill where they can take up to 1,000 years to break down, according to First Mile, a hanger recycling company.

At last month's London Fashion Week, Mouret offered 300 of his new hangers for free to most designers, however, only around 20 per cent accepted them.

According to the BBC, Mouret told BBC Breakfast  "A beautiful garment has to be hanged on a hanger and has to be carried by van to the store.In that travel, we use single use plastic hangers that we throw away straight away after, and they're all polystyrene and polystyrene is not recyclable."

"I think it's stronger than a normal hanger, but at the moment, if you break it, it's completely recyclable.You can have something that becomes so circular that nothing goes back to the sea."

With growing concern over the use of plastic hangers John Lewis is inviting its customers to bring in old hangers for reuse or for in-store recycling, while an Aberdeen shopping centre has created a scheme where customers can leave plastic hangers in a designated area in its car park entrance for others to reuse.