Nudie and UNIDO prove Tunisian proficiency for denim recycling
Since the project started in 2020, the companies have repurposed 6,530 pairs of second quality jeans into 16,000 new pairs of jeans with a composition of 20% of recycled cotton.
Roberta De Palma, chief technical advisor from UNIDO, said: ”According to a textile waste mapping study from UNIDO, Tunisia’s textile and clothing industry generates over 31,000 tons of pre-consumer textile waste each year, out of which over half is either 100% cotton waste or cotton-rich waste.
“The transport of pre-consumer textile waste from Tunisia to recycling facilities in Europe and Asia increases the carbon footprint and causes up to two-thirds of the total cost of recycled denim. All the recycling and remanufacturing processes in the pilot project were undertaken in Tunisia, within a radius of 180 km, reducing costs and CO2 emissions from transportation.
“Recycling locally helps to retain the value in Tunisia while positioning the Tunisian industry on the global market as a future partner with a supply-chain that can produce more sustainable denim.”
Nudie Jeans offers services such as free repair services, sales of reused denim and a trade-in scheme for their used jeans.
Eliina Brinkberg, environmental manager at Nudie Jeans, said: “We have been looking for a smart resource-use solution for our second quality stock, and we hope that this can help to ‘close the loop,‘ avoiding textile waste from landfill, and at the same time replace virgin materials in our jeans. We are looking into the possibility of using cutting scraps as well, to try to use as much of the waste from our production as possible.”
The jeans produced in the pilot are already available for sale in selected Nudie Jeans shops and online. The report summary is available here.
Read more about Nudie in Inside Denim Issue 6, when we chat to sustainability manager Sandya Lang.
