New Israeli Green Initiative Aims to Reduce Waste Produced by the Clothing Industry It took 1,320 liters of water to produce your new pair of jeans, and twice that much to produce the cotton shirt you wear with it. When these items are discarded, they will continue burdening the environment as they end up incinerated or buried in landfills. Re-Born Textiles, a new Israeli initiative, offers an alternative that not only saves clothing and other textile waste from the trash heap but also employs at-risk populations. “Israel produces at least 500,000 tons of textile waste a year, which costs the state around 150 million shekels [$46 million],” says Viktoria Kanar, cofounder of Re-Fresh Global, an open innovation platform for circular economy and innovations for the textile industry. “Currently, there is no green, transparent and effective solution in Israel for this problem. There aren’t too many options for used clothing collection and no organization can collect all the discarded clothing,” she says. Re-Fresh Global built its Re-Born Textiles system on three pillars: reuse, remake, recycle. Collected clothes or other textiles in new or almost new condition will return to retail (reuse), while clothes in worn condition will be upcycled into new products (remake) or recycled for use in the construction, automobile, and other industries. Source: Israel21C ?? IF YOU LOVE ISRAEL - SHARE NEWSRAEL! ??