Saving water
Their raw material is “grown” and sourced locally and they organize their production cycle as locally as they can as well. According to their research, a small country like Belgium generates 82.000 ton of textile waste a year. In Europe, that means 1 truck load of textile waste each second, of which more than 85% goes to landfill or is incinerated. If we try to visualize these volumes, these figures are alarming. Less than 15% of all textile waste is recycled. Even for the small difference a project like Joseffa can make, they think it’s absolutely motivating to contribute to textile circularity. Not only do they help reduce textile in landfill, but they also avoid useless CO2 emissions, caused by incineration of end of life men’s shirts. By working on existing fabric that has been produced for the original shirts, they can avoid an entire cycle of cotton production. That way, they re-value all resources that made up the original cotton… and the water they use for the washing of their shirts is local rainwater, which is an abundant resource in Belgium!
Giving water
In addition to offering an alternative to consuming the approximately 5000 l of fresh water it would take to produce each of their pieces from new cotton, they support the KO NEERE-project in Burkina Faso, a semi-desert area where people are traditionally farmers. Many villages have poor or no access at all to safe drinking water. Women are very vulnerable to poverty. The KO NEERE-project, initiated and managed by AMURT/AMURTEL, improves water access and trains women in several villages in rural Burkina-Faso.
