Slow Chain
Basic information
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Full project title
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Project Description
What happens to our textile waste? How can we turn it into a community resource? Circular economy, textile recycling chain, conscious citizenship and social entrepreneurship are complex concepts that come to us as answers. Yet this is possible only when they are turned into daily practices. This project will merge them and give life to a virtuous circle of concrete initiatives that contribute to the growth of a more inclusive and sustainable society.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
Although the existing good practices and the introduction of a new Italian law on textile waste sorting by 2022, a joint effort is needed in Trentino to build a circular textile chain. An integrated system of collection, disposal and up/recycling of textile waste is missing as few best practices are available but as isolated projects. This project, inspired by the successful Australian model of Upparel, aims to bring a concrete improvement related to social and environmental sustainability. The project idea aims at developing a traceable local supply chain for the disposal and reuse of textile waste thus creating new opportunities for "social development" by involving local government, social enterprises, and citizenship in a supply chain that proposes new inclusive, beautiful and sustainable solutions.The project idea concerns the daily life of the Trentino community in a threefold direction:
- CITIZENS: through the design of concrete solutions to support them in adopting a more sustainable lifestyle both on an environmental level (separate collection and recycling) and on a social level (direct interaction with the players involved in the projects, meaning to become conscious changemakers).
- SOCIAL SECTOR: through the creation of new opportunities for entrepreneurial development of non-profit organizations through the sorting, upcycling, and sale of disused materials, thus giving new job opportunities to marginalized people.
- PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: through the design and prototyping of a bottom-up and participated solution, it offers to the local administration a system of separate collection of textile waste thus ensuring a lower production of waste to be disposed of and the opportunity to re-populate some areas of town centers through the opening of second-hand stores.
The key stakeholders will be involved in the creation of a consortium, each actor will cooperate in the process management of collection, storage, upcycling, sale of discarded garments.
Key objectives for sustainability
Sustainability is embodied by the project itself: through the promotion of the concept of reuse and the creation of a local and transparent supply chain for the collection of textile waste, the project promotes a new circular system that ensures a lower production of waste and Co2 needed for the disposal, and consequently a lower cost for local governments. According to the new Waste Framework Directive, EU Member States will be obliged from the beginning of 2025 to organize the separate collection of textile waste. Italy decided to bring forward the deadline to 2022. The latest research (ISPRA, 2021) shows that more than 140k tons of textile waste were discarded in Italy in 2020, with an average of 2.6 kg of textile collection per person. A legal obligation is not enough to solve the problems related to post-consumer textile waste. It is necessary to build an ecosystem around it involving municipalities, entrepreneurs, and citizens; to highlight the role in the textile chain that each actor has. Following the principles of circular economy, the model includes increasing the awareness of the citizens about the amount of textile waste and the possibility of reusing collected textiles.The model will run the items from the sorting point accordingly:
- good state items are immediately put on sale
- repairable goods are sent to local partners who could fix them and get them ready to be sold
- items too ruined to be repaired could be:
- send to upcycling organizations
- sold to national recycling companies as secondary raw materials
The sustainability of the project will therefore be guaranteed by a sharing of responsibilities by the various stakeholders involved, each of whom will have a "gain" in participating. Thanks to its "concreteness" and "daily application" it will also guarantee a greater awareness of citizenship and therefore encourage a more sustainable lifestyle. Last, but not least the model is easily replicable in other cities.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
According to the European Commission, the textile sector has an important ecological footprint: it is responsible for 10% of world emissions of greenhouse gases. The world of textile production has been completely revolutionized by the “fast fashion phenomenon”, characterized by cost reduction, acceleration of production times, use of non-biodegradable materials, and the short average life of the garments. This phenomenon is estimated to have high environmental and social costs due to its production processes, and that is why nowadays fashion is somehow the emblem of beauty and hidden ugliness.
Second-hand shops need to embody the beauty side of fashion to be attractive. This could be achieved by hlighlighting the uniqueness of the items sold and being sparkling clean and tidy, with a central position in the city. The second hand has been linked to poverty for too long. Instead, we want it to be trendy and yet affordable.
According to this project, the shops will offer the chance to buy not only second-hand items but also upcycled products and garments made with recycled fabric enhancing the awareness of all the sustainable alternatives that we have to the actual “buy-use-trash” model.
Not only shops should be beautiful, but all of the elements linked to the model should inspire a sense of beauty: for example, the collection bins should be attractive, in order to grab the attention of citizens. This idea introduces the opportunity to create new links with local actors such as art schools and artists, that will be involved in the design of the collection boxes.
Local Authorities will be involved in the process of identification of private or public dismissed premises to be destined to the shops, thus enabling the regeneration of urban and periurban spaces.
The long-term goal of this project idea is to couple the second-hand market with a sense of beauty and purpose, giving it a new dignity.
Key objectives for inclusion
Social inclusion is a pillar of the project as explained in the following lines. Each shop will be linked to a charity as the aim of the sale is not profit but funding social activities and keeping the clothes in the loop.The repairing and upcycling activities will be done by local partners, chosen prioritizing social enterprises. The shops will work as a contact point with citizenship, seeing that people will have the possibility to bring their items to bins or directly to the shop where they will see where their garments go and who will take care of them: specifically social workers and marginalized people.The shop is meant to be a safe space for marginalized people who would be responsible for some minor activities hence valorizing their skills and making them feel worthy.Some of the activities behind the shop are a good fit as job training, in particular, the clothes sorting, price tagging, and tidying up of the space.Moreover the sorting and disassembling of textile is a long and slow job that is not profitable enough for factories, but it is a necessary step in the circular economy that can be handled by social entrepreneurs. The project supports the local authorities in the building of a circular ecosystem for the textile waste, nonetheless increasing the trust bond with the citizenship that can see and be involved in the managing of the textile waste stream.Further development of the project would be the creation of new opportunities for entrepreneurial development of non-profit organizations with the new online marketing channels (through activities such as posing, taking pictures, etc) instead of being relegated to the creation of repetitive crafts.Selling clothes would be a means to normalize a part of society that is still stigmatized.In conclusion one of the network endeavors is also to create relations between urban and rural areas of the region, where is it possible to find some of the partners working in the repairing and upcycling activities.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Sustainability, Social Inclusion, and Aesthetic are combined, mainly, within the shops: beautiful places in the middle of the city selling clothes- otherwise destined to landfill- with the aid of marginalized people, who have the chance to be the one who provides assistance instead of receiving it. This kind of work environment is extremely beneficial for both the customer and the workers.
The citizen entering the shop becomes aware of the amount of textile discarded by its community and takes ownership of the problem by doing something good for the planet and for the people.
On the other hand, marginalized people who work in the shops find a place that agrees with their pace and where they feel worthy and empowered.
Another point of contact of the three key aspects is the traceability of the process. Being transparent is an asset of aesthetic in its purity meaning and embodying the beauty of knowing. Traceability is the basis of circular economy as a prerequisite needed to calculate the LCA of a product. LCA is the only scientific tool that we have nowadays to determine the ecological footprint of processes and products. Traceability is also an asset for social inclusion being a driving aspect of citizenship involvement.
As a matter of fact, a traceable and transparent process of the circular textile chain engages citizenship and increases awareness of the importance of everyone's participation, allowing the development of better coexistence in more beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive places, creating a link between global challenges and proposed solutions at the local level.
