Our partners from NWE in Halabja started a new project, combining small economic income raising with environment protection: They collect old clothes and upcycle them to new ones.
Iraq and Kurdistan are flooded with cheap clothes from other Asian countries. Many of these were produced using child or forced labor and are thrown away after few times. This is where a new project of Wadi and our partners from NWE in Halabja comes in: They collect old clothes and offer workshops how to upcycle them into new ones.
At the same time they offer awareness seminars about the enormous impact the fashion industry has on pollution of the environment. Few people know that “fashion accounts for up to 10% of global carbon dioxide output” and is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of global clean water pollution.
This is the terrifying impact of ‘fast fashion’ that not only destroys the environment, uses exploitative labor practices, but also destroys local economies by flooding markets with cheap clothes putting local tailors out of business. This project is trying to change that by teaching the useful skills of sewing, but now with an environmental focus on how to re-use or ‘up-cycle’ clothes that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
Wadi 
