In the last two articles, we told you about our partnership with Re.Verso and the process that transforms recovered cashmere into new yarn. Today, we’re closing the week with the numbers: how much does choosing regenerated yarn instead of virgin yarn really matter environmentally, and why is the textile waste problem not a minor detail, but one of the least discussed emergencies in global fashion?
The problem: where the clothes we throw away really end up
When we donate or throw away a garment, we tend to imagine that it will still end up in a virtuous cycle - reuse, second-hand, charity. The reality is more complicated. A significant portion of the used clothing collected in Europe is exported to Africa, where it often does not find a second life, but becomes waste. According to a Greenpeace report, 46% of used clothing imported into Africa in 2019 came from the European Union, and just six African countries (including Ghana, Kenya, and Tunisia) imported nearly 900,000 tonnes of second-hand clothing in 2022 alone. Ghana by itself receives around 15 million used garments every week, about half of which are deemed unsellable because of poor quality or damage, ending up directly in informal landfills or being burned in the open air.
So this is not just a question of "how many clothes we buy", which we had already discussed in another article: it is also a question of where, physically, what we discard ends up, often in countries that did not produce or consume those garments, but find themselves responsible for disposing of them.
The answer: giving the yarn a second life, not just the garment
The regenerated cashmere created through our partnership with Re.Verso addresses this problem at its source, intercepting cashmere before it becomes waste while also avoiding the need to produce new virgin fibre. And the figures are clear: according to data collected by Italian companies specialising in the regeneration of cashmere and wool, producing regenerated yarn can reduce water consumption by up to 90% and CO2 emissions by more than 90% compared with producing virgin fibre, with estimated energy savings of around 77-80%. These figures naturally vary depending on the production process and the specific fibre, but they provide a concrete sense of how much resource consumption can be avoided simply by recovering something that already exists.
Why yarn alone is not enough: the repair service
Regenerated yarns are an upstream solution, but not the only one. We have always offered a repair service for Lanaioli garments that need it, precisely because the most sustainable way to manage a garment is not to recycle it as soon as possible, but to make it last as long as possible before it even becomes material to regenerate. Buy less, choose better, and then take care of what you have chosen: these are three stages of the same philosophy, not three separate initiatives.
The complete picture
With Re.Verso, we are, for now, concluding our account of the three new developments in this phase: the merino wool from our short supply chain and the Sopravissana breed, the natural fibres developed with Maeko Filati, and now regenerated yarns. Three different responses to the same underlying problem: a fashion industry that, globally, produces and discards more than the planet - and the people who live on it, often far from where those clothes were purchased - can sustain.
In the coming weeks, we will tell you how these three stories come together in a single vision for the autumn-winter collection.
