A Plan to Nurture a Circular Economy in Fashion With Unsold Clothes
An El Salvador company aims to help retailers turn their millions of tons of never-worn garments into the raw materials for next season’s offerings.
Shredded fiber ready for repurposing at an Intradeco factory in El Salvador.
Source: Recover Brands
In the shadow of the volcano looming over San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, a vast warehouse thrums with an industrial rhythm as machines shred bales of fabric scraps into mounds of cotton and polyester. These fibers are fed to a second production line that spins the feathery tufts into spools of yarn. The spools are soon woven into fabrics of myriad colors that will be used for T-shirts, pajamas, hoodies and more bound for US stores. And some of the garments, you can be sure, will eventually return to the same factory to again be shredded and rewoven.
The facility is run by Intradeco Inc., a family-owned textile conglomerate that traces its roots to Palestinian immigrants a century ago. Over the decades, the company grew into one of the region’s largest fabric producers. More recently, it’s expanded into manufacturing finished garments for the likes of Amazon.com, Target and Walmart, with sales approaching $800 million in 2022, a slight increase from two difficult years during the pandemic.