Moda re-: Caritas Textile Project in Spain for Recycling and Job Creation

Among the various tasks of Cáritas, one of the best known has been linked to the established Spanish tradition that, when a family had clothes in good condition, but for whatever reason they were no longer used, they were taken to the parish. where a group of volunteers prepared it to deliver it to families in need, in the best possible conditions. When in recent decades, associated with the development of the consumer society, there was an increase in the volume of textile waste and the management of textile waste from volunteering in parishes became unfeasible, several diocesan Caritas asked themselves if this reality could be an element of job creation and this is how we begin to think about the new Cáritas textile project that we know today as Moda re – which wants to respond to two objectives:

• Provide the best help to get a person out of a situation of social exclusion, offering them the possibility of access to a job that, in addition to everything it means in terms of economic income, represents an opportunity for personal growth and integration in community. For this purpose, insertion companies dedicated to the collection and treatment of textile waste were created.
• Avoid the accumulation of non-reusable clothing in a landfill and be able to give the best environmental treatment to used clothing, by setting up comprehensive treatment plants.

Currently Moda re- is the Cáritas project for the collection and treatment of used clothing in Spain, which collects more than 42 million kilos of clothing annually (which represents more than 40% of all the clothing collected in Spain). It has a network of more than 6,500 clothing collection containers and 3 used clothing treatment plants, which in their scope are the most advanced in southern Europe. And through its alliances with large operators in the textile sector, it leads the preparation processes for textile reuse and recycling, to convert non-reusable textile waste into new raw material.

Since its first steps, this project has received important morale injections with the publication of the two encyclicals, Praised yes with what it represented as a commitment to the care of the common home and that for the Cáritas Common Textile Project It was, at that time, a stimulus to continue growing in the improvement of the treatment of used clothing. And later with the encyclical Brothers all where the clear commitment to work: That is the best help for a poor person, the best path to a dignified existence, coincides and reinforces one of the fundamental objectives of Moda re-.