Brazilian pioneer turns trash to treasure as Earth Overshoot Day shows planet in peril

On 29 July 2019, humanity logged a new dismal record, exhausting nature’s resource budget for the whole year with over five months to go. This is the earliest Earth Overshoot Day ever, and it offers a stark reminder of how human activity is depleting our exhausted planet’s finite resources.

Over the past 20 years, Earth Overshoot Day, which marks the date when humanity’s annual demand on nature exceeds what the earth’s ecosystems can regenerate in that year, has moved up three months. This means we are depleting our natural capital faster and faster, imperiling the survival of future generations.

The date is calculated by the international research organization Global Footprint Network, using its ecological footprint tool. Ecological overspending translates into deforestation, soil erosion, biodiversity loss and more carbon emissions.

The urgent need to address humanity’s wasteful use of the world’s resources lies at the heart of the UN Environment Programme’s push for sustainable consumption and production as part of its commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. To preserve our planet, economic growth must be decoupled from the consumption of finite resources and waste must be designed out of the global system.

This is exactly what Magna Coeli set out to do when she set up a textile company, Refazenda, in Recife in Brazil in 1990. Long before upcycling had entered common parlance, the Brazilian stylist found a way to turn trash into treasure by collecting discarded fabric and using it to make new clothes, jewellery and accessories.

Refazenda’s workers use patchworks made from fabric scraps as raw materials for the design of new items. Although the firm started making household fabrics, today it makes clothes and also produces natural fabrics using organic cotton, silk and linen.

“Now I look back and understand that I have always looked at ways to practice upcycling, well before the concept was created and had its meaning defined in dictionaries,” Coeli says. “The essence of the ‘value-added recycling’ was built into the business concept, together with the desire to think about fashion in a circular way.”

Coeli believes that it is not possible to be environmentally sustainable without being socially and financially sustainable as wellю

UN Environment works with textile industries to promote moves towards a circular economy and hosts the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, an initiative of United Nations agencies and allied organizations that aims to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through coordinated action in the fashion sector.

“The only way we can all live well on this one planet while guaranteeing everyone’s health and dignity is to radically change the way we produce, consume and live our lives. A transition to more circular approaches to sustainable consumption and production patterns is urgent,” said Ligia Noronha, Director of UN Environment’s Economy Division.

The need to do more with less and do everything differently lies at the heart of efforts to secure the survival of our planet in the face of population growth, climate change and other challenges. On 23 September 2019, the UN Climate Action Summit will be held in New York to highlight the need to act urgently on these interlinked issues.

Original source: UN Environment
Published on 29 July 2019