Ropa hecha de basura para limpiar los océanos de plásticos

You can be well-dressed starting from waste. If I didn't explain to you that this

t-shirt is made from trash, you surely would never have noticed. We don't have another

planet to go to, so we have to start taking care of it and being

responsible for all our actions. Demonstrating that it's possible to do things in a better

way, much more respectful of the planet and people.

80% of the waste in the sea comes from the land. What does that mean?

That we humans have thrown it there. And among the worst things we have been

doing is abandoning waste in nature. Many people don't know it, but this 'trashure' (basuraleza)

gives a name to a problem that nobody seemed to want to see. At Coenvest,

we've been involved in recycling for 20 years, and we thought we had to showcase

it beyond the environmental area, in other fields. And fashion is a very good way

to visualize what the trash deposited in the

yellow and blue bins becomes. Ecoalf is a fashion brand born with a very clear

objective: to be a truly sustainable fashion brand. The principle we started working with is

to use the minimum amount of natural resources. And the quickest and easiest way to

start working like this is by looking for materials made from waste.

The Upcycling of Ocean project was born out of the need that arose when we

discovered the problem of trash in the sea. We have already collected over 200 tons

of trash, and well, we can say that our great allies are practically the fishermen,

who are the ones making this

project possible. In the sea, we find cans, plastic bottles, iron, wood, cardboard, car tires,

refrigerators, containers, stoves, outrageous things. I personally, as president, could convince the fishermen that all

the trash collected would be recycled and brought ashore. We started collecting trash in August

2015. In this port alone, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, and Andalusia have come together. We believe

that by collecting trash today, there will be fish tomorrow. And for those who come

after, at Coembes, we joined Upcycling of Ocean to give a second life to all

the waste abandoned in the sea. In the end, we keep the PET, the plastic

from the bottles, and with that PET, we make yarn, which we then use to

make fabric. Once that plastic reaches land, it has a problem: how to use it,

and that's where Antex and Santanderina decided to get involved to try to extract yarn

from that plastic that could be suitable for use in new materials. Seaqual is the

brand that, together with Ecoalf and Antex, we developed for the use of all products

that come from the sea once recovered. The main waste we use as raw material

is nylon from fishing nets, polyester from water bottles, recycled cotton, recycled wool, we even

use coffee grounds to give properties to the fabrics, and we also use recycled tires

to generate the soles of our flip-flops. The biggest impact comes at the very beginning,

which is in the raw material. That's where we have a huge impact, because if

we talk about cotton, for example, we have the entire impact of all the water

we needed, of all the pesticides that were used. And in the case of polyester

and nylon, we avoid starting from petroleum and instead use a bottle or fishing nets

that could have been considered waste at the time to convert them back into raw

material. And today, we can say that we are achieving a total look. What we

hope for the fishermen in this project is that in the long run, not only

Spanish fishermen but global fishermen will join this project, because the trash travels from one

place to another. And also, the most important message for me is for the people

on land, to be aware that they shouldn't litter, because in the end, all the

trash ends up in the sea.