Eastern Michigan University graduates are going green in more ways than one. This December, more than 2,000 graduates will be walking across the stage in the traditional gowns made with a twist: Each gown is made from recycled bottles — 23 to be exact.
Everything from the cap down to the gown is made from recycled materials, and is available in black or green and feels like soft polyester.
The environmentally friendly gowns are the product of Virginia-based Oak Hall, a leading manufacturer of academic apparel that has been in business since 1889. Their new line of recycled apparel, called GreenWeaver, took 14 months to develop.
Oak Hall is currently the only cap and gown business to manufacture regalia from recycled plastic. For every 1,000 students who walk in GreenWeaver regalia, Oak Hall estimates that 23,000 plastic bottles are kept from landfills.
The firm has already removed 12 million plastic bottles from landfills as of July 2012, which would have taken 50 to 80 years to decompose. EMU will be saving the environment from a wasteful 46,000 bottles that would have been in landfills just by using the new regalia in this one commencement ceremony.
EMU first debuted the regalia for the April 2011 commencement. Now, several new features are available for the December ceremony.
Undergraduates, who were formerly clad in black, will now walk down the aisle in dark green caps and robes, but Master’s students will still be dressed in traditional black. Doctoral robes will be dark green and black, with dark green velvet panels trimmed in white cord.
All robes will now have the university seal embroidered on the front two tabs. The Undergraduate and Master’s gowns are available at the EMU campus bookstore while the doctoral regalia are custom ordered.
The winter commencement ceremony is Dec. 16 at 2 p.m. at the Convocation Center. After the ceremony is over, there will be boxes outside of the Convocation Center for graduates who wish to donate their caps and gowns to be recycled again.
