In the messy business of clothing manufacture, there are people out there looking to reduce their impact on the environment. Heddels investigates how.
There is no other way to say it. The clothing industry is a messy thing! In the US alone, 26 Billion pounds, that’s 26 with nine zeros behind it (11793401620 kg for our us Metric lovers) of waste clothing is created each and every year and denim, with its global popularity, will make up a large part of this.
What a Waste!
Most of this cast-off clothing ends up in landfills. This represents a massive waste in not only the clothing itself but also the energy expended from growing the cotton, right the way through the manufacturing process to the garment ending up on the store shelf.
Tech Savy Solution
In a bid to reduce the amount of clothing that ends up in a big ol’ hole in the ground, Artistic Fabric & Garment Industries or AFGI based in Karachi, Pakistan is investing in sustainable technologies which will take some of this waste cotton and recycle it into usable cotton fibres. These recycled cotton fibres can then be mixed with newly harvested cotton to produce new yarn.
See It For Yourself
Our friends at Heddels travelled to Pakistan earlier this year to talk to systems designer Ampelio Del Lago and witness first hand how these old jeans are getting a new lease of life.
The video is fascinating to watch and we take our hats off to the guys over at AFGI for being so forward-thinking in their approach to sustainability.
