Karoline Klarbaek

Karoline Klarbaek is a 19-years-old girl from Denmark who started her business when she was 17. It all started in her design school where she had to do a project instead of exams and she wanted to create something physical in order to talk to people about plastic and sustainability so she created a yarn entirely made out of plastic.

Karoline was helped by her mother, Karen, who owns a little company; they tried to buy used plastic in Denmark but they couldn´t, so they bought it in India. They found a partner there who started producing their product using recycled water and 3 bottles per yarn, coloring it with ecologically tested standard approved colors. Then, they send it from India to Denmark by ship because it emits 8 times less CO2 than other shipping methods: they do this since they´re convinced that in order to call a product sustainable it has to be sustainable its whole lifetime.

She made very clear that this yarn isn´t meant to be used for clothing for two reasons: first due to its itchiness and secondly, even if it gets dirty less often, when it is washed it releases micro plastic. In fact, it´s mainly used for bags, floormats, computer´s sac, etc.

Her goal wasn´t to make money out of it, but to show people that if she could make a change, anybody can. She also wanted to make companies realise that you can actually profit from sustainable products and that they shouldn´t be afraid of making the first step just because of people´s reactions.

Therefore, Karoline wants everyone who uses her product to reuse it over and over. She was a real inspiration for all of the participants of the Erasmus- Plastic is Fantastic project  because she convinced us that you can really make a change no matter what your age is or background.