Recycling fashion: The town turning waste into clothes- BBC News

most of our clothes will never get recycled 99 will end up here dumped and burned in landfill our earth at this point it's not capable of absorbing the huge amount of clothing is produced each year but what if all those wasted clothes could be saved and turned into something else i've come to a town in italy called prato this place has mastered a method to transform old scraps into new clothes what happens here is unique there are hundreds of companies in this small district and each specializes in one specific aspect of the process whether it's spinning weaving or designing and today incredibly this town says it processes 15 of all recycled clothes in the world so this is your shirt if it's too old for the charity shop it gets sent for recycling here it's sorted by collar torn apart washed and then the new recycled material is taken and transformed to make new clothes with minimal waste that was very quick let's go through the process again you donate clothes they arrive here from lots of different countries all the garments that can't be sold second hand are taken to this company nearby here not only are they separated by color but also by material i think these used to be trousers the clothes are put in this it's called a carbonizing machine it eliminates impurities from the wall then they go through this it's like a giant washing machine they're shredded cleaned and dried this is the final result your old clothes have been transformed into these fine fluffy wool fibres so at the end of the process this is what the new recycled materials look like they're placed here until a fashion brand buys them and uses them to make clothes some people might say that you are using trash to make clothes questions recycling wool is great for the environment co2 emissions are more than halved compared to when clothes are made from new material we have an immediate impact on animal welfare because you reduce the stress that you have to put on the animals to get the wool almost complete elimination of dyes because the way the wool is recycled is an assortment by color this is a method that's been passed on from father to son the culture in prato is the kind of culture that we need across the entire fashion industry because it is based on collaboration that are local but are capable of showing how if these things are taken internationally global scale the entire industry could benefit the people of this town were forced to recycle clothes because they couldn't afford new ones now their methods which have been honed over the past 100 years could offer a way forward for a more sustainable fashion world

Channel: BBC News

Views: 713,493

Rating: 4.9679093 out of 5

Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news

Id: 7i0QMnz4ExY

Length: 3min 53sec (233 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Shl33]

I very much enjoyed this. You should also post this to r/weaving, they'd love this too!!

[u/Musique111]

And on r/zerowaste 😊

[u/Fizjoy]

That's great to see. The fashion industry and fast fashion are a wasteful. Mainly fast fashion. Creating cheap garments that are only worn for half a season and disposed of. I've had clothes for a long time. True I paid more but the quality is great and they last .

[u/ncharles3]

Really enjoyed this, thanks for posting! I didn’t hear it mention the name of the factory/company featured, anyone know it? Just curious :)