The School is committed to promoting circular design at all stages of fashion students and professionals’ training cycles, and innovating in materials and technologies
News
IED Barcelona renews its support for the ‘Circular Fashion Pact’
Date
02 January 2025
The fashion industry has a huge impact on the environment. In the last 15 years, clothing consumption has doubled, along with, paradoxically, a reduction in its useful life of nearly 20%. And with less than 1% of all textiles in the world being recycled to become new fabrics, this waste has become a major problem of global scope.
In line with the vision of design as an agent of change to positively impact society and the planet, IED Barcelona, a benchmark in fashion design training and education, participates in a range of initiatives that advocate to create a circularity-driven model of production and consumption in the textile sector. This is why it has once again renewed its commitment to the Circular Fashion Pact, an agreement promoted by The Government of Catalonia in collaboration with the entire textile value chain, which celebrated its second anniversary on 6 November.
The global objectives set out in this new campaign are:
- Reduce the generation of textile waste (in kg/person/year). Reduce generation by between 5 and 10% compared to the current amount (2019) which is 21.5 kg/person/year (163,478 t/year).
- Increase the percentage of textile waste collected separately. Achieve between 25 and 30% collection, when the 2019 amount was 11.7%.
- Increase the percentage of textile waste collected separately that is recycled. Achieve between 55% and 60% of textile waste prepared for reuse (2019 amount: 50%) and between 40% and 50% of textile waste recycled (2019 amount: 40%).
In the case of IED Barcelona, as a Design School, its commitment to contribute to these objectives involves:
- Promoting circular design at all stages of the training cycle of fashion students and professionals working in the field.
- Innovating in materials and technologies.
To do this, a range of actions are carried out, such as:
- Reuse of final fabric. This material comes from donations from major brands or leftovers from projects by other students.
- Reuse of materials for the creation of internal/external exhibitions, thus giving them a second life.
- Training and raising awareness around sustainable and, above all, conscious design.
- Training and raising awareness around the purchase of “fair” materials, supporting recycled materials, in the same way as buying from stock salers.
- Creation and implementation of biomaterials, many of them biodegradable.
- Use of 3D fashion design.
- Conducting talks and masterclasses (in November, for example, the round table ‘EU Cotton: paving a sustainable future for European Fashion’ was held. Led by Anta Tsaira, EU Projects Consultant; Panos Sofianos, Circularity Strategist Denim Innovation Curator at BLUE ZONE SHOW by Munich Fabric Start; and Paula Palomino, IED Barcelona BA (Hons) Fashion Design alumnus, current Head of Fabric Sourcing and Innovation at Massimo Dutti).
In addition, during the 2024-2025 academic year, special sustainable fashion and upcycling projects related to the topics of the pact will be carried out across the degree programmes.
Image from the masterclass ‘EU Cotton: paving a sustainable future for European Fashion’, led by Anta Tsaira, EU Projects Consultant; Panos Sofianos, Circularity Strategist Denim Innovation Curator at BLUE ZONE SHOW by Munich Fabric Start; and our alumnus Paula Palomino from IED Barcelona BA Hons Fashion Design, current Head of Fabric Sourcing and Innovation at Massimo Dutti.
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