Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Made in Finland
Pure Waste and Costo turn textile waste into completely new products.
The Goretex of recycling Finnish company Pure Waste Textiles is renewing the image of recycled textiles – and showing that a cloth made of 100 per cent recycled material does not have to be wornout or old at all. Quite the opposite. By Johannes Laitila | Photos: Pure Waste / Costo
Textile factories around the world tend to produce not only clothes, but also a massive amount of textile waste, which in turn has a very negative impact on the environment. This is where the founders of Helsinki-based Pure Waste Textiles saw an opportunity. If the textile waste can be used and reproduced in order to create completely new clothes, it would both be ecologically sustainable and change people’s idea of recycled materials. “We came up with this completely new kind of recycling aspect,” says Hannes Bengs of Pure Waste Textiles. “Usually,
recycling is about turning old into new, but we wanted to do something that was new all along.” Pure Waste Textiles sources textile waste globally and processes it into textile and yarns that are made completely of recycled material. Nothing is added. “For example, factories produce so much denim waste annually that if it was turned into a textile roll, it could be wrapped around the world eleven times,” Bengs explains. The idea of Pure Waste Textiles only emerged some two years ago, and the company was founded last November. However, the people behind Pure Waste
had already gathered years of experience in the field of recycling and fashion. In 2006, Bengs started a company named Costo with a couple of friends, all of them in their late 20s at the time. “We didn’t know exactly what we were going to do, but it was to have something to do with fashion and ecological thinking,” says Bengs. Costo started to produce, and still does, accessories such as hats, bags and wallets, and the idea was the same: everything had to be 100 per cent recycled. Pure Waste is ambitious in its approach, and the company has aimed for the international market from the very beginning. “In the future, we are hoping to sell Pure Waste alongside other brands – a little bit like what Goretex does, but with recycling.” We all know Goretex, right? Be prepared for Pure Waste to ring the same kind of bell. For more information, please visit: www.purewastetextiles.com
Issue 67 | August 2014 | 55