From luxury scraps to ethical chic: a new wave in sustainable fashion
Project Manager
Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Cartiera, an ethical fashion lab in Emilia-Romagna, transforms luxury fashion waste into sustainable products while offering employment and training to refugees and asylum seekers. By repurposing high-end surplus materials, the lab tackles both environmental and social challenges, promoting circular economy and integration through craftsmanship. As a response to the fast fashion industry’s ecological toll, Cartiera stands as a model of ethical production—where sustainability, inclusion, and heritage intersect to shape a more responsible future for fashion.
Transforming high-end waste into sustainable style: an ethical fashion lab empowers migrants while challenging the fast fashion industry’s environmental toll.
The fashion industry is undeniably one of the crown jewels of Italy’s production system, embodying the unique values and lifestyle traditions of the Bel Paese. However, in recent years, the fashion sector has had to face the pressing need to become increasingly sustainable—whether through the direct transformation of artisanal and industrial production or via indirect approaches. It is within this latter framework that Cartiera finds its place, a dynamic enterprise born in 2017 in the province of Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, with a truly unique story.
This artisanal venture in Emilia is an ethical fashion lab that creates its products by repurposing waste and surplus materials from major fashion houses, while providing employment to refugees and asylum seekers.
The United Nations Environment Programme calculated that in 2019, the fashion industry was responsible for 10% of the global CO2 emissions and ranked as the world’s largest consumer of water resources. In that same year, Cartiera processed 5 tons of leather from the luxury supply chain that would otherwise have been discarded. Considering that leather production emits 110 kg of CO2 per square meter—even when using hides from animals destined for food consumption (source: 2017 UN data)—the importance of this ethical craft workshop becomes evident. By recycling materials that would otherwise have a severe environmental impact, the lab stands as a virtuous model of circular economy.
The sustainability of Cartiera’s artisanal process goes beyond using scrap materials to produce new clothing or accessories. It also embodies a model of social integration, transforming migrants into the next generation of artisans. This approach promotes the empowerment of these individuals while preserving a craft that was at risk of disappearing.
Sustainability is also the keyword from an economic perspective. This model of fashion offers not only an ethical and more sustainable alternative to the fast-fashion phenomenon, which has become so pervasive, but also an answer to the problem related to the pollution and waste management costs associated with the “throwaway” culture in fashion.
In 2017, the United Nations’ Ethical Fashion Initiative—a program dedicated to sustainable fashion—was looking for models for a show featuring emerging African designers. They found them among five asylum seekers in the province of Bologna. Since then, some of these individuals have become artisans in this ethical craft workshop, and among them, there is even someone who has become a partner in the business. As the project leader put it, this is a way to «stitch back together the wounds these individuals have endured through the art of tailoring».