It may be a long way from the recycling plant to the catwalk, but Woman's editor Christen Pears meets a North-East student who is turning plastic bottles into clothes.

YUKIE Nakano's spinning machine is broken and she's just sent back home to Japan, asking for a replacement to be posted out. "I'm a bit stuck at the moment without my machine but normally I spin my own yarn and weave it into fabric. It takes a long time but it's really important to what I do," she says.

Yukie, a PhD student at Northumbria University, is looking at ways to recycle plastic bottles so they can be used in the fashion industry. The notice board behind her desk at the Centre for Design Research, where she works as a research assistant, is covered in photographs, fabric samples and even a pair of gloves made from recycled material.

Recycled PET (polythylene terepthlate) is already used in the fashion industry but only in a limited way, and Yukie is working to identify the barriers preventing designers from using more recycled textile products. She's also experimenting with recycled plastic to produce new types of fabrics, mainly knitting yarns, which she hopes designers will want to use.

She says: "PET is fairly easy to recycle and can be made into flakes, which can then be spun as yarn. It has been used in a limited way in the fashion industry but it has never really taken off.

"In the process of doing my research, I've discovered that companies are keen to incorporate recycled materials but there's a lack of information."

PET plastic materials, such as those used for bottled water, are derived from crude oil and the rapid growth in their use in recent years, combined with their extremely short life cycle, means they starting to pose a serious ecological problem.

"We now have a throwaway culture and our lifestyle is very dependent on crude oil. That can cause problems, especially as the Middle East is so unstable at the moment," explains Yukie.

"After the oil crisis of the 1970s, lots of technology for recycling was developed and after the Gulf War, a lot of designers got interested in using recycled materials. But then oil prices went down and stayed down. It was cheaper to use virgin materials than recycled ones and people became less and less interested."

Consumption is increasing all the time but we are already running out of landfill sites in Britain. Plastic, which is non-biodegradable, is a major contributor to landfill and Yukie's research has revealed that in 1998, only three per cent of plastic bottles were recycled. She hopes that by using more recycled plastic in the fashion industry, it will reduce the amount being tipped into landfill sites.

But the recycling process is a long and complicated one. Once the bottles have been collected, they have to go through several stages of separation and cleaning before being ground down into flakes and dried. They're then turned into pellets and dissolved using solvents. The filaments are extracted, spun and stretched and woven into yarn.

Yukie became interested in recycling several years ago while working as a fashion designer in Japan. "When you design a collection, you just think about the look you want to create and you use quite a lot of expensive materials. You don't think about how much you're going to waste.

"I visited a couple of factories in Japan and all these expensive fabrics like cashmere were just lying on the floor. It really made me think, but it wasn't until I came over to the UK that I was in a position to do something about it."

She hopes that her work will both improve the type of materials available and make designers more aware of the possibilities of using recycled yarn. By spinning her own yarn, she is developing methods to convert raw fibre into texturally rich yarns that will be more appealing to the fashion industry. Ten years ago, the fabric was quite harsh and suitable only for stuffing furniture, but now it is much softer and can be woven or knitted or turned into fleece.

"Up until now there have been some technological problems with the process, but the quality is getting better all the time and you can see a real difference," she enthuses, as she shows off some of the samples she has produced.

These are the yarns and fabrics she plans to show designers. She's already visited Katherine Hamnett, who expressed an interest in using recycled materials in her collections.

"Like a lot of designers, I think she was quite keen but they all need to know more. From my own experience, I know that designing a collection is really hectic and you don't have time to look at other options. They probably won't know where to start. That is where I come in. I am hoping to make them realise that they can do a lot of design work with recycled fabrics."

And getting designers to work with recycled products is half the battle. At the moment, most customers have no idea that they can buy clothes made from old plastic bottles, but Yukie is convinced her work can raise awareness.

"If designers don't produce the clothes, the customers are never going to see the products. I have come to the conclusion that if designers and manufacturers are really excited about the materials, then the customers will be as well. I think recycled fabrics could be used very widely."

Yukie has already completed two-and-a-half years of her PhD and will be spending the next year or so writing up her findings. Once she's finished her studies, she hopes to collaborate with the fashion industry on a project aimed at increasing the use of recycled fabrics in the UK.

"Recycled plastic is used a bit in Japan and America but hardly at all over here. It would be great if I could work with the industry to change the situation."