Closed Loop Fashion is honored to announce that we have won the Sustainable Initiative of the Year 2023 Award by Development2030 together with our project partners H. Nizam Din & Sons Private Limited and Alpinter SA. The award ceremony took place during AidEx – The Global Humanitarian Aid Event, sponsored by DirectAid and Deloitte in Palexpo, Geneva, on the 25-26th of October 2023.
This accolade recognizes the best examples of beyond-aid strategies, emphasizing the need for innovation, technology, and multi-sector collaboration in addressing complex humanitarian challenges. Our receipt of this award underscores our unwavering commitment to excellence and our significant contribution to sustainability within the development aid sector.
Despite the humanitarian sector’s efforts to assist vulnerable groups and displaced people, there is a paradoxical contribution to climate change due to significant greenhouse gas emissions from the production, packaging, and transportation of relief products. This challenging reality places growing pressure on the humanitarian sector to reduce its environmental impact.
Our winning project titled “Circular Economy for humanitarian aid products: A sustainable transition for Pakistan manufacturing and packaging of disaster relief blankets” is a visionary two-year Public-Private-Partnership co-financed by the German Investment and Development Corporation / DEG Impulse gGmbH DEG, utilizing public funds from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and & H. Nizam Din & Sons Private Limited . The initiative aims to establish new industry standards to reduce the environmental impact of disaster relief blanket production and distribution. Our objective is to minimize the environmental footprint through the adoption of circular systems, recycling post-industrial textile waste, and producing blankets entirely made of recycled materials. We initiated the project by conducting a Life-Cycle Assessment of the carbon footprint of the conventionally produced high-thermal blankets. The analysis identified the raw material input and packaging as the primary, critical intervention points to reduce the product carbon footprint.
Together with our partners, we piloted solutions to optimize the raw material input of the product by using 100% recycled materials from GRS-certified recycled polyester and textile waste. By substituting virgin materials with recycled material, we can proudly announce a significant reduction of 66% of the carbon footprint for the raw material usage compared to conventional blankets. Furthermore, we eliminated single-use plastic and incorporated more sustainable materials for packaging, resulting in a 35% carbon footprint reduction of packaging.
We want to express gratitude to our project partners for their contribution to advancing circular systems. Together, we’ve prototyped creating a more efficient, sustainable, and local supply chain that promotes closed-loop material cycles for humanitarian aid products. Join us in April 2024 at the Dubai World Trade Centre during DIHAD (The Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development) Conference & Exhibition, where we will proudly share the transformative outcomes of our final project results. Save the date for this impactful event, from the 23rd to the 25th of April 2024.
