“Made in Chile” solutions for tons of used clothing

Chile is the first consumer of clothing in Latin America and also the region’s leading importer of second-hand garments from Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada. EcoFibra, Ecocitex and Sembra have made textile waste their raw material.

While the UN warns that in the world “every second is buried or burned” the equivalent of a garbage truck with textiles, in Chile Franklin Zepeda, Rosario Hevia and Mónica Zarini give new lives to that garbage.

The wind is running in favor of recycling the waste generated by the textile industry, which will be included in the Extended Producer Responsibility Law (REP), which obliges clothing and textile importers to take charge of their waste.

To the heat of cotton

Zepeda worked for almost 10 years in the free zone of Iquique, in the north of the country, and began advising importers of used clothing, but seeing so much textile waste made him turn around.

“I wanted to get out of the problem and get into the solution,” says Zepeda, founder of EcoFibra, a startup that has been growing since 2018 with the manufacture of thermopanels for homes at its plant in Alto Hospicio, near the port where tons of used clothing arrive.

The ecological insulation that they have developed at EcoFibra leads them to process up to 40 tons of used clothing per month in alliance with Zofri, the free zone in Iquique, and support from the environmental authorities of the Tarapacá region.

There they separate cotton clothes from those with synthetic and polyester fabrics, for which they developed a special liquid that gives them a fire-retardant property.

With ecopanels, accessible prefabricated houses are made for social housing, replacing highly polluting glass wool or mineral wool.

Zepeda remembers when he saw on his motorcycle “mountains of clothing garbage in the driest desert in the world, and I said no, I have to do something”: his thermal insulation panels “are the only ones in Latin America certified under construction standards” , he says, proud of developing “a high impact product in a small commune.”

100% recycled yarn

Tired of her work in corporate finance and with two young children, Rosario Hevia started Travieso, a children’s clothing reuse store, where she discovers the great problem of disused clothing.

Inspired by reducing Chilean textile waste, she founded Ecocitex in an old spinning mill on the verge of bankruptcy after the social crisis of 2019. She encouraged her workers to follow the trade but to manufacture yarn made from clothes in poor condition and textile scraps .

Today Hevia has a 100% recycled product, without using water or dyes in an innovative process with “clothes that will end up in landfills”.

With international recognition and expansion of clients in Chile, he maintains that his country “is experiencing a turning point.”

“For many years it was consumed and nobody seemed to care and more and more textile waste and more waste was generated. Nowadays people are beginning to question themselves ”and they are concerned about taking care of the planet, he says optimistically.

“We are wearing the problem”

From Sembra, an eco-technology explorer field in Nogales, central Chile, Mónica Zarini has been promoting businesses with social impact for more than 20 years and studying the route of used clothing to find recycling solutions.

From used clothing they make lamps, containers, notebooks, bags, boxes and even collections for corporate gifts.

This month his project “we wear the problem” was awarded financing from the Angloamerican mining company, to promote throughout Chile the manufacture of clothing with natural resources and educate on the impact of excessive consumption on the environment.

Trade policies in the ‘fast fashion’ industry “have helped convince us that clothes make us prettier, that it gives us a style and even heals our anguish,” says Zarini.

“Consumers who are aware of the environmental damage that this activity causes, attribute the problem to industries and the lack of regulations”, but “we all wear the problem,” he warns.