Plastic bag material turned into water-repellent fabric – E&T Magazine

Engineers have developed self-cooling fabrics from polyethylene, a material commonly used in plastic bags.
The thin, lightweight material could keep the wearer cooler than most textiles because it lets heat through rather than trapping it, the MIT engineers said. However, it also locks in water and sweat, a major deterrent to polyethylenes adoption as a wearable textile.
The team has now managed to spin polyethylene into fibres and yarns designed to wick away moisture. They wove the yarns into…

Click here to view the original article.