Responsible for Caritas, in the warehouse fitted out for ‘Moda-re’. /
The Catholic organization joins a national project to collect, recycle and reuse garments
Cáritas Diocesana de Plasencia will expand the network of containers for used clothing and footwear that are already scattered around the city, and it will do so within the framework of a new project for the collection, recycling and reuse of garments. The initiative is called ‘Moda-re’ and has been operating on a national scale for a few years. Cáritas de Plasencia now joins her, as explained yesterday by those responsible.
“We will kick off this new project with the location of the new containers in the city,” says its general secretary José Luis Espinosa, who also explains that it will be the Grupo Cáparra insertion company that will be in charge of ‘Moda-re ‘ in the city. In Plasencia there are currently three Caritas containers for used clothing and footwear. They are at the entrance to its comprehensive employment center (south beltway, kilometer 2), in the parish of San José (Miralvalle neighborhood) and in El Pilar.
“In the coming weeks we will put new containers in the Carrefour hypermarket, in the La Isla car park and in the Ciudad Deportiva,” says Iván Torres, director of the social action area of Cáritas Diocesana de Plasencia. He also explains that the initiative that has just been launched has three main objectives. «The first –says Torres– is to reuse and recycle clothing and footwear, which are among the most polluting materials that exist; the second is to generate employment; and the third is to dignify the lives of our users».
Five people will be hired thanks to this initiative, which includes the opening of a store next year
The first phase of the implementation of ‘Moda-re’ in the diocese is the placement of the containers, and the second consists of collecting what is deposited in these containers and transferring it to a warehouse where the pieces are compacted and stored to later be taken to a recycling plant in Madrid. The third step is to bring the clothes in good condition to the stores. There are already a hundred scattered around the country, and the project’s roadmap contemplates the opening of one in Plasencia in the first half of next year. “Our forecast is to collect about one hundred thousand kilos of clothing in the first year,” advances Iván Torres, who also details that, “of every one hundred garments collected, 65 end up in the store and 35 are used for different uses, including production of materials for industry”.
The entire process will be articulated by Grupo Cáparra staff, explains José Luis Espinosa, who also comments that for the moment, the Cáritas wardrobe will continue to function, although it is a model to be extinguished. When it closes, its users will continue to have access to the clothing they need, through a system similar to that of vouchers that is already used to meet other needs, such as food.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.