In this respect some initiatives have taken the lead and have set to work. These include, for example the product design firm Actiu, which has set up Second Act, a collection of articles made from discarded materials which are thus given a new opportunity. In any manufacturing process there is always excess material. In the case of Actiu, it is fabric. This material is placed in the hands of local artisans to create unique, locally made products, which do not generate waste or pollution deriving from transport.
The firm GAN, successor to the original textile business of Gandia Blasco, continues its strategy of social and environmental sustainability. One of its initiatives, in cooperation with designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón, is the collection of rugs designed to raise awareness and to combat, through craftsmanship, the problem of plastic waste. Each rug is an accurate representation, to scale, of one of the most polluted and polluting rivers on the planet: Ganges, Indus, Yangtze and Niger. The rugs are handmade with the hand-tufted technique, using recycled plastic fibres (100% recycled PET).
Since June 2021, the 20 fixed ecoparks of the Metropolitan Entity for Waste Treatment have collected a total of 90,922 kilos of clothing since the Humana Foundation’s textile waste containers came into service. This initiative has avoided the emission of 558 tons of CO2 and has favored the creation of new jobs.