How did Kimood’s K-Loop Project come about?
WHY?
I’m Matteo and I’ve been working in the world of textiles for years. I’ve tried to hold onto my values while meeting the needs of a world built on industrial products. I work to design products that give me as much pleasure in producing them as in wearing them.
A few days ago at the supermarket, I heard the following conversation between my eldest Alessandra (6) and her younger sister Marina (3).
Marina: “Dad, I’m thirsty. Please buy me a bottle of water!” Before I could answer, Alessandra said: “You know we don’t buy plastic bottles because they end up in the sea and the fish die. Dad will give you water from our thermos”.
What are the reasons behind the K-Loop Project?
Explaining it better than a six-year-old girl is impossible.
What is the K-Loop Project?
The K-Loop Project is the “loop’s loop” or the “circular economy” in marketing speak.
What does that really mean?
This simply means that the fabrics used to make K-Loop bags come from recovering production waste from many KARIBAN BRANDS products. Scraps such as organic cotton.
As symbolised by our logo, we salvage everything we can to give new life to individual cotton pieces. To quote the famous 18th-century chemist, biologist, philosopher and economist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”.
How do you implement K-Loop?
The K-Loop Project aims to sort and recycle production waste in our factories. “Chance” help us minimise the footprint because the factories are located less than 20km from the spinning centre where we collect all the bundles of waste we refer to as “jhoot” (hence the name of the colours).
In the spinning mill called “Symco”, the fabrics are separated by colour whenever possible. If the scraps are too small, the fabrics are simply mixed all together regardless of colour.
Once the colours are separated, everything is shredded to create a cotton amalgam that can be trimmed. Yarn treated in this way is too short to be spun on its own, which is why a polyester core made from recycling PET water bottles is added during spinning.
Nel processo si aggiungono anche dei tracer per tracciare, attraverso informazioni salvate in un In the process, we also add tracers to track the origin of all the recycled materials through information recorded in a blockchain.
Once the yarn is obtained, we transfer it to Ausbanglatex who take care of everything else i.e. weaving the canvas, cutting it and sewing it into the bags you have in your hands.