How many jeans are in a closet?
How many are actually used?
How many of them are recycled?
Too many questions for a growing business.
The website specialized in the fashion industry Modaes predicts that
denim
is skyrocketing, and announces that “in Germany it is expected to grow by 3% each year, while the rest of the European markets will reach a figure of 4.6 billion dollars until 2026″.
In Spain, there are firms such as Back To Eco, Infinit Denim and Recover concerned with converting those
jeans
that sell exponentially into new garments through
upcycling , by processing
denim
scraps
to create new threads;
and, through
recycling
, creating fabrics with which they make new custom products.
However, what is new is that the waste from jeans,
appeared back in 1873 thanks to Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, become raw material to obtain new objects.
This is the idea that the emerging brand Creavalo has developed, with headquarters on Avenida del Textil in Ontinyent, an Alicante town historically focused on the weaving industry, the same place where the Textile Museum of the Valencian Community opened in December 2022. .
More information
Nicolai Marciano, son of the co-founder of Guess, reinvents jeans in a sustainable way
At the last Habitat Valencia Fair and in the context of the latest edition of Nude, the Young Talents in Design Show that has been collecting the most experimental proposals from the world of design for two decades and is a platform for launching and creativity, Creavalo presented small tables , trays, rugs and sound-absorbing decorative panels made from post-consumer jeans.
Behind his name, which speaks for itself about his purpose, is the young Joan Gisbert who explains his objective: “To create value from textile waste, something that in principle we did not know how to do but that we developed from the idea of wanting to give it an outlet and position the resulting product at a high level.”
The concept of giving a new life to jeans arose when Gisbert was doing an Erasmus program in Holland and, with training in Industrial Engineering and Business Management, he worked for a company that produced recycled products made from orange peels.
“I started thinking about the question that in the near future all companies will have to take sustainability and waste recycling into account,” he recalls.
His research is supported by data from the European Union which indicates that approximately 17 million tons of textile waste are generated per year, which means 12 kilos of textile per person per year in the EU.
Stools, rugs and paintings made with scraps of 'denim' from the Alicante firm Creavalo.Creavalo
Along these lines, even a giant furniture company such as Ikea has just launched the Växelbruk collection, made from the uniforms of its employees that they have recycled after collecting 300 tons of staff from its European stores, between 2020 and 2022. "This pilot project aims to explore how used uniforms can be converted into secondary raw materials and how to develop and manage the recycling process within Ikea, from the collection of textile waste to the production of new products," they indicate in the collection launch.
Already on sale in stores and
online,
it consists of up to 12 textile items, including curtains, cushion covers, blankets and bags made with these recycled fibers mixed with materials such as recycled polyester, used PET bottles and uniforms with some defects.
But what differentiates Creavalo is the production of objects.
To launch the brand's image and shape the first collection, currently composed of small and medium-sized pieces, they have had the designer tandem formed by Ana Segovia and Luis Calabuig, at the head of Odosdesign, who They share Creavalo's ideology and, as they say, they found the initiative of collecting textile waste to create a product from something that previously went to landfill interesting.
“He contacted us because he is a
start-up
from EDEM, the Juan Roig Business School, and asked us for help to create the brand image, make himself known and make the first capsule collection that is made up of rugs and small pieces of furniture such as little tables and also a sound-absorbing panel and vases,” says Segovia.
Creavalo's first collection is made up of small and medium-sized pieces.Creavalo
Gisbert comments that, for the moment, and following the idea of circularity and sustainability, “they want to start working with national waste, not from other countries, to take care of the carbon footprint.”
And he adds: “We want it to expand like an oil spill because, according to
National Geographic
, the amount of textile waste is so large that it corresponds to a full truck per second and this is something that is already being given a lot of attention in Europe.” importance".
In this Alicante firm they have two ways to obtain the waste.
“On the one hand, companies that generate a lot of waste, which are easier to track because post-industrial waste for them is more regulated;
and, on the other hand, the textile waste that also reaches us through national waste managers.
This is the case, for example, of jeans,” he details.
Their first collection is called
Capsule 1,
and it will go on the market this March with the help of Punt Mobles, a company with a factory in Elda that will be in charge of editing the series created with Odosdesign that will be launched in Milan, the best showcase for a presentation.
“We are going to include this collection of small pieces and furniture in our furniture catalog because we loved the concept and also the design, in addition, we had already worked with Odosdesign so it was like squaring the circle, and we have decided to value this and launch it at the Salone del Mobile in Milan,” says Pablo Ramiro, from Punt Mobles.
According to him, the markets of the United States and Europe are the most open to the concept of circularity.
“We are already moving it throughout our distribution network that covers up to 40 countries around the world,” he adds.
"The idea is to continue publishing products that Creavalo produces with different creators so that they join our own creations and also, on the other hand, that we ourselves develop other pieces in the future to put them on the market."
In addition to small furniture, the collection includes trays, vases, stools or panels to cover walls.
For Creavalo, being an emerging company and with ideas as innovative as recycling and
upcycling
textiles turned into objects for the home, “satisfaction is total because Punt Mobles is a company with significant experience behind it and this is a good sign,” he indicates. Gisbert.
“This topic has generated a lot of interest on the part of furniture companies because having waste and managing it entails storage and transportation costs and the industry is paying to have the waste taken away.
If not, they reach African countries that buy this waste and this is generating a serious problem, so this idea is unique in this type of recycling,” adds Calabuig, from Odosdesign.
In addition to jeans, they also work with other textile materials such as sheets, from large hotel chains, "because they are more controlled and give us more confidence to ensure hygiene."
They also transform car mats and trunk liners.
In the case of textile waste from hotel chains, “this means taking a problem off their shoulders and at Creavalo, we also want to propose that they contribute to circularity by purchasing recycled products, small pieces of furniture instead of virgin wood pieces to equip the accommodations,” says Gisbert.
The jeans come from post-consumer products, although they have tested them with post-industrial waste material (such as offcuts or factory remains) and the result is the same.Creavalo
The jeans come from post-consumer products, although they have tested them with post-industrial waste material (such as offcuts or factory remains) and the result is the same.
“We wanted to create something beautiful and attractive and that is why we have decided to make trays, vases, stools, paneling to cover walls.”
The key is in the way they work, consisting of crushing and compacting processes that are then treated with between 10 and 15% binder.
“This depends on the pieces because the important thing is that, by using little binder, the resulting product can be crushed and compacted again to form new pieces, in this way they comply with the idea of being recycled and recyclable products,” says Gisbert.
For Odosdesign, “the work signature that converts textile waste almost into a powder is interesting, subjected to a process of molds that compact the product to which they apply temperature and pressure.
Now, they are exploring resistance, using harmless varnishes, since that quality also contains the idea of sustainability because it allows products to have greater durability.”
“We want to prevent our new product from reaching the landfill and generating waste again,” concludes Gisbert.
A sample of the different objects belonging to this first collection.Creavalo
Meanwhile, when it comes to jeans, they want to collaborate with brands like Levi's, which already has collection points for its pants in its stores to make new clothes.
“Although this generates little recycling, with Punt we want to propose to brands that with their own recycling of pants we turn them into decorative accessories for their stores,” he advances.
On the occasion of this edition of the Madrid Design Festival, Creavalo has entered the MINI Design Award to be present at this important event while awaiting the grand launch in April in Milan.