90 MILLION TEXTILE ITEMS HAVE BEEN SAVED FROM GARBAGE IN ONE YEAR

In just one year, 90 million textile items were given a chance for a new life, reported the Bulgarian Association Circular Textile (BACT), whose goodwill ambassador for the utilization and recycling of textiles became the designer Nevena.

The couturier who dresses world stars such as Elle McPherson, Nicole Scherzinger, Elizabeth Hurley and public figures such as the president's wife Desislava Radeva join forces in order to reduce the carbon footprint on the planet from the production of clothes and the boom in "fast fashion".

Outside the glamorous world of fashion, textiles also have their dark side, related to the environmental impacts of the production of new clothes and the increasing proportion of textile waste. It is not by chance that textiles are called the new plastic - the production and sales of textile products are increasing exponentially every year, this leads to ever greater amounts of textile waste, and the impacts on the environment are huge, noted BACT.

Their focus in the last two years has been promoting the environmental savings of textile reuse and recycling, as well as promoting responsible consumption and opportunities to reduce everyone's personal footprint through separate collection and extending the life of clothing and textile items in general.

In the last three years alone, the members of the association have processed and recovered over 96,000 tons of textile waste, saving 1.7 million tons of carbon emissions for the production of new textiles and clothing - equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 million cars (that's three quarters of all cars in Bulgaria), and the prevented amount of textile discarded in landfills is equal to the saved plastic for the production of 5 billion bottles, according to the data of the organization, which has united nearly 50 Bulgarian and international companies with many years of experience in the utilization of textile waste.