Lauren Choi looked at thousands of red Solo cups littering her Johns Hopkins campus and saw something nobody else did, building a machine during her senior year that could transform those notorious party cups into comfortable textile filaments for clothing production. The engineering student partnered with campus fraternities to collect thousands of red cups as raw material, then taught herself weaving at a Baltimore maker space to turn those filaments into actual fabric that became the foundation for The New Norm, her textile company now producing sweaters and beanies from recycled plastic. The first collection launched in late 2023 using 5,000 up cycled party cups and sold out completely in just two months, proving that consumers want sustainable fashion that doesn’t sacrifice comfort or style for environmental benefits. Getting to that success required years of development work with experts at Gaston College’s Textile Technology Center and the Polymers Center in North Carolina, who helped Choi create a custom formula that made the fabric soft and cozy instead of brittle and plastic feeling like early prototypes.
The company now uses 3D knitting technology in Brooklyn to create seamless garments that retail for 45 to 85 dollars, with pastel colors coming directly from the multicolored party cups themselves rather than added dyes that would create additional environmental impact. Choi works with textile facilities in North Carolina and Virginia to produce yarn using continuous filaments rather than spun fibers, which makes the material less likely to shed micro plastics that pollute waterways and harm marine life. The 3D printing process creates complete garments without seams, eliminating fabric scraps and waste that plague traditional cut and sew manufacturing methods used by most clothing companies. While Choi acknowledges significant work remains to reduce plastic use overall, her success transforming billions of tons of party waste into fashionable clothing that people actually want to wear represents real progress toward solving the mountains of plastic choking our planet.
