Sophia Bettiza: Most of our clothes will never get recycled.
99% will end up here, dumped and burned in landfill.
MW: Our Earth at this point is not capable of absorbing the huge amount of clothing
that is produced each year.
SB: 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.
FT: This makes us feel proud.
SB: 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 colour, torn apart, washed,
and then the new recycled material is taken and transformed
to make new clothes with minimum 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 be sold second-hand
are taken to this company nearby.
Here, not only are they separated by colour,
but also by material.
Think these used to be trousers!
How many clothes do you recycle here?
FT: About 25 tonnes every day.
SB: The clothes are put in this.
It's called a carbonizing machine -
it eliminates impurities from the wool.
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.
FB(Owner): This might have been the case a few years ago.
The word "rubbish" was an insult.
But now, many brands... they buy my products because of it -
because they know that reusing resources is going to save the planet.
SB: Recycling wool is great for the environment.
Co2 emissions are more than halved
compared to when clothes are made from new material.
MW(FashionRevolution): 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 colour.
SB: This is a method that's been passed on from father to son.
MW: 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 into a national or global scale,
the entire industry could benefit.
SB: The people of this town were forced to recycle clothes
because they couldn't afford the new ones.
Now their methods, which have been honed over the past hundred years,
could offer a way forward for a more sustainable fashion world.
Subtitles by Livia Cefaloni Review by Carol Wang