Good practice:

REDU

REDU was launched in Iași as a pioneering project at a national level in the field of slow fashion, social economy and green entrepreneurship. It opened a collection centre for pre-consumer and post-consumer textile waste and installed several other collection boxes. REDU’s name comes from the 3Rs of ecology – reduce, reuse, recycle and it is both an advice and an imperative for addressing the impact through reduction of consumption, of waste, of pollution. It developed and equipped a workshop for creating new products out of the textile waste and created the equivalent of four new full time green jobs. In their 5 years activity, they managed to collect approximately 10 tons of pre-consumer and post-consumer textiles which we managed to transform into 4689 up cycled new products - clothes, accessories and home items. Among these, they produced a number of 2104 products out of local textiles and ethical sources and extended the life cycle for over 3000 reused products that were sold in the cycle during this period.
They are targeting mainly individuals, raising awareness and stressing the importance of sound consumption choices, but they create as well practical alternatives in the community for sustainable production and consumption. The overall purpose of REDU is to contribute to a more sustainable community. The means REDU uses for this awareness raising on the significance of responsible consumption and hidden costs of conventional economic activities and help people,

Support granted by Innovation Norway.
The first direct beneficiaries of REDU are the people who started the implementation. 8 green jobs have been created through the project and the project provided opportunity for them to come together and form a consolidated team with shared responsibilities.

Using what other consider trash as a raw material is the best approach we can have now as an alternative for decreasing the environmental impact of textile and fashion industry.
Thus, through REDU, in their 5 years activity, they have contributed to a reduction of over 100 tones of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, the equivalent of a quantity of C02 a forest of over 90 ha, with around 75 000 trees can sequester in a year.

This is courageous because they want to have a social business financially sustainable while not compromising the values and principles integrated in vision. Educating the consumers on the hidden costs of textile industry and the need to change choices for benefiting both the environment & society.

The degree of transferability is really high and it represents one of the main purposes of REDU - to create a sustainable green business as a model for others to follow or replicate.
REDU concept store – environmental, social and economic innovation.
By doing this, REDU aims at following as close as possible the laws that are governing the natural circuits of nature, where there nothing is lost, but transformed, where there is no waste, but everything eliminated by a species becomes in varied ways resources for other species. Nothing innovative here, but the approach - circular, collaborative, degrowth, human face – is innovative.