Prato: The Beacon for Recycled Fashion's Future

Written By Tirsa Parrish

Textile waste is one of the biggest talking points in the fast fashion industry. Fast fashion emerged to fill the demand for inexpensive clothing with increasingly shorter fashion trend cycles. This desire to buy garments for a short amount of time before they go out of style has necessarily led to an increase in garments headed to a landfill. 84% of gently used clothing that goes to a second-hand shop in an effort to reuse and reduce waste often ends up in the landfill. 

Sustainability As A Way Of Life

As the industry incorporates more sustainability into their products in response to customer demand, many brands are utilizing recycled materials. One of the first popularly marketed uses of recycled items in fashion was converting plastic water bottles into fabric. There are intrinsic problems with this method as water bottles are fairly easy to recycle into new bottles making them almost infinitely recyclable.

However, when you take bottles out of this recycling loop and convert them into fabric for fashion, the plastic is no longer recyclable. Additionally, as these garments are worn and then washed they release micro plastics into the water supply. When these garments are no longer wanted, they go straight to the landfill where they cannot decompose. 

Compressed bales of waste wool. Image via bloomberg.com

Fiber recycling seems like a new solution to a relatively new problem of overproduction and waste in the fashion industry. However, recycling of wool fibers has been happening in the town of Prato, Italy since the mid-19th century!

Prato is located about 25 km (15 miles) north of Florence and this area of Tuscany has been a textile capital since the 12th century. During that period, garment manufacturing was regulated by the Wool Merchants’ Guild. Due to an old law prohibiting the import of raw wool, the city has become a leader in recycling the material, producing 15% of the world’s recycled textiles. A few companies specialize in other natural fibers like cotton or cashmere, but wool is the heart of Prato’s recycling efforts. 

Only fabrics made from natural fibers are recycled in Prato. Blended fabrics, those with a mixture of natural and synthetic materials, are popular with both consumers and producers because of the benefits of handfeel, appearance, and performance and in some cases price. However, there is no current industrial method for separating blended fibers to recycle the fibers.

Research has been published from North Carolina State University where they have developed a method to separate cotton from polyester in a blended fabric, but it is in early stages and not ready for commercial application at this time. 

Separating garments by color and material type. Photo: Marco Columbo. Image via newseu.cgtn.com

Prato’s Wool Origin Story

A huge concern in fashion recycling is separating materials in blended fabrics. However, there have been various methods of shredding rags to separate the vegetable fibers from wool, cotton, or cashmere since the 1850s. The recuperated fibers are then used to make blankets and fabrics for the clothing industry.

Prato was a very poor area at the time and the residents were not able to purchase fine clothing. Out of necessity, many residents collected rags to make clothes for their families. The men who collected the rags at this time, known as “ragmen” were called Cenciailioli in Italian, and they became experts in evaluating the rags by just touching them, selecting them by quality and color. Thus spawned the fiber recycling industry in Prato. 

After WWII there was a lack of raw materials, and recuperating old clothes, fabrics, and rags became essential. Prato became famous for their expert garment recycling. The end product was highly prized, and they imported enormous bales of mixed fabrics and old clothes from all over the world to separate, shred and recycle into new fabrics for the ongoing production of blankets and clothes.

This led to an economic boom in the textile industry in Prato. The narrow streets of Prato echoed with the loud clacking of the machines and looms, which seemed to hide behind most doors. Everyone was involved in the industry in one way or another.

Recycled fibers. Image via contemporaryfashion.com

It Takes a Village

Tons of clothing arrives in Prato daily to begin the recycling process. Much of the town is involved in the various processes required from sorting, drying, shredding, carbonizing, and spinning.

There are over 7,000 textile and fashion companies which are part of the recycling process and/or use the reclaimed materials to create new garments. Each of these businesses specializes in one part of the manufacturing process, whether it be spinning, warping, weaving, dyeing, finishing, printing or designing.

The district is made up of a network of businesses, factories, mills, and shipping facilities that all play a part in the making and selling of recycled fabrics. Only about 3% of the garments/fabrics that arrive for recycling ends up in landfills.  

The first step is to open the bales of unwanted garments and hand sort them by quality, material type, and color. Keeping like colors together means that the recycled yarns or fabrics do not need to undergo the water and chemical intensive dyeing process later on.

There are usable garments that arrive at the recycling facilities and these are separated out and sent to eastern Europe or Africa for distribution. The fabric sorted for recycling is then chopped and shredded.

In the case of wool, the chopped material then undergoes a carbonizing process. This method combines scouring to remove the wool grease and the addition of chloric acid to remove cellulose from plant matter such as seeds, burs and grass. 

The recycled fibers are then delivered to other factories around Prato. Part of the unique ability of this town to successfully recycle garments is that every operation needed for the circular process of recycling to manufacturing of new garments is available in the same place.

Each step can happen almost immediately as there is no need to wait for transportation to a different city or country (or continent). This reduced emissions from transportation, but the savings in time is a huge monetary benefit to the recycling industry. 

Machine spools recycled wool in preparation for spinning. Photo: Keri Oberly. Image via patagonia.com

Recycled Fibers Give Fashion A New Lease On Life

In the factories, the fibers are first transformed into yarns. Colors are mixed at this point to get the customers desired shades. Synthetic fibers can also be added into the yarns according to customer demand. The yarns are then woven into finished fabrics and sent to garment manufacturers around town to complete the recycling loop. 

Prato is a model for clothing recycling, but world-wide less than one percent of textiles are produced in this way. In February, 2021, as part of a new drive to combat climate change, the European Commission announced a comprehensive EU Strategy for Textiles to encourage the industry to recycle fabric as they do here in Tuscany.

As the world’s capital of post-consumer textile processing, many of the larger fashion brands in search of more sustainable production models are looking to the Tuscan city for their expertise and their recycled yarns. Zara, H&M, Banana Republic, and Armani are some of the businesses that have used recycled fabrics from Prato in their collections.

The competition from developing countries such as China and India has taken its toll on the Prato textile industry. Today, Prato has the opportunity to become the world’s leading recycling center for old clothes and discarded fabrics, given the long experience the town has in this field. Perhaps more importantly, Prato can serve as a beacon for other industry towns to be designed and grow to improve the global textile recycling capabilities and help further reduce textile waste and pollution that will impact the planet for generations to come.