Prada Re-Nylon #4 - China

Turning trash into treasure, Prada Re-Nylon champions the use of regenerated nylon ECONYL® as the foundation of a new circular supply chain in fashion - recycling discarded waste and using it to invent a new, entirely sustainable breed of Prada’s signature nylon fabric for the 21st century. Re-Nylon is a unique initiative, in line with the innovation that is the hallmark of Prada.

Unravelling the threads that make up Prada Re-Nylon, What We Carry is a branded content series of films that explore the diverse multinational sources of resources - from the deep ocean to the factory floor - and chart the sustainable materials harnessed used to create ECONYL®.

For the fourth instalment of What We Carry, National Geographic Explorer and photo journalist Hannah Reyes Morales and Chinese actor and Prada reporter Wei Daxun travel to China - renowned for centuries as a home of textile production. They have visited the clothing factory Parawin in Ganzhou City, part of the province of Jiangxi in southeastern China - housing around 300 workers across every part of garment production, from pattern cutting to construction and finishing.

In collaboration with ECONYL® textile yarn producer Aquafil, Parawin are now committed to recycling their discarded textile cuttings: offcuts are organised via fiber content and transported regularly to Aquafil’s Shanghai base, to be transformed into ECONYL® regenerated nylon, and then woven into Prada Re-Nylon. Parawin are the first factory to partner with Aquafil to recycle their waste fabric - but they blaze a trail to be followed by others.

ECONYL® yarn is totally recyclable, and can be regenerated an infinite number of times: so Prada Re-Nylon bucks damaging age-old convention of garment production. This is fashion created with no waste, and open to boundless possibilities.

After episodes charting the recycling of diverse, divergent materials - carpet in North America, discarded fishing-nets in Australia and Africa - this penultimate chapter focuses on waste within the fashion industry itself, which is address, combatted, and ultimately reversed through the endlessly recyclable nature of Prada Re-Nylon. It shows that what we carry can make a difference.