Circular Fashion Agreement in Catalonia
Catalonia faces important challenges with regards to the textile sector: each person consumes 21.5–26 kg of textile products per year, more than 147,000 t/year of textile waste is used for power production or deposited in landfill sites and only 12% of textile waste is collected separately.
After a co-creation process of more than one year, when shared goals were established, the Circular Fashion Agreement in Catalonia was launched in May 2022 with 57 signatories at the first stage. After its first year of action, this number has increased up to 103 entities from the different links of the textile value chain. These involved stakeholders are producers, retailers, technological companies and centers, public administrations, universities, waste management companies and entities from the third sector.
The Agreement emerges intending to add and coordinate the efforts of all the links of the textile value chain, and to answer collectively and effectively to the sector challenges, establishing common objectives on textile waste, and creating instruments that enable the transformation of the sector towards a circular model.
To reach the objectives of the Agreement, eight working groups were set regarding prevention, separate collection, green public procurement, circular products, reuse, recycling, public awareness and dissemination. During this first year, eighteen meetings were held.
From the signature of the agreement different concrete actions have taken place:
- 080 Reborn - October 2022 and October 2023: Second-hand clothing fashion show from 080 Barcelona Fashion.
- Miki Núñez, a Catalan singer, commits to wearing second-hand clothes at her events – November 2022. The action is aimed at young people and teenagers, key in the change towards a conscious, sustainable and waste-free consumption of fashion.
- Circular and sustainable fashion, the main objective of the XIV European Waste Prevention Week. Two tons of waste from selective collection were installed in the center of Barcelona to symbolize the current generation of the textile waste and the goals they want to take on textile waste prevention. There were also workshops and educational activities to explain the impact of clothes and how to extend their useful life.
- Submission of projects to industrialize the value chain of the use of post-consumer textiles as a secondary raw material in Catalonia within the framework of the circular economy funds from the Catalan Waste Agency
- Ecoloop UB, winner of the Catalonia Ecodesign Awards 2023 in the Product category, October 2023 . from the company Techni Tiger, SL: a type of fabric for making work clothes that contains up to 65 % of recycled fibers.
- Re-Yut-Cel from Sylvia Calvo BCN, together with other members of the Cricular Fashion Agreement won the Green Product Award. Re-Yut-Cel is a regenerated natural yarn made mainly from recycled jute coffee bags and waste fibers from cotton spinning, that can be used to make fabrics for the fashion and interior design industries..RE-YUT-CEL:
- Collection Reduir Summer 23 of Miriam Ponsa . The designer catwalk presented clothes made of recycled and natural fabrics such as cotton, silk and hemp and proposed the production on-demand. The parade took place at the Solidança textile waste sorting