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So we decided to enter partnerships to develop our own materials, a project that kept Ecoalf busy for its first three years.

So there was a real industrial challenge?

Technological innovation is essential to transform old fishing nets or cotton or plastic waste into the highly technical materials required to produce trainers, clothes or fashion accessories. By way of example, the fishing nets we collect are cut up and reduced into fragments to form a thread that can then be weaved. We have specialised partners all over the world, in Taiwan, South Korea, Portugal, Mexico, Japan and Spain, who enable us to produce our fabrics where the waste exists, and to avoid emitting CO2 by transporting it, which would be ridiculous. Today, we have shown that recycling can go hand in hand

with quality and beauty, but when we started out, people thought that we would recover their grandmother s old sheets and turn them into shoddy bags.

In September 2015, you furthered your commitment to protecting the oceans with your Upcycling the Ocean programme.

Today, this is our most ambitious project, run by the Ecoalf Foundation and funded by the HAP Foundation1. The project consists of working with fishermen to collect, on a massive scale, the waste that is threatening to destroy the Mediterranean by damaging coral reefs and poisoning marine wildlife. The waste is then sorted and, whenever possible, recycled to make high quality

Pécheurs remontant leurs filets | Fishermen recovering their nets

© E co al f