The textile industry is among the world’s most harmful industries. Textile production pollutes rivers, uses excessive amounts of water and chemicals, and labour conditions are often very poor. All this only so we can fill our wardrobes for very little money. Happily, there are many initiatives that give us hope by trying to do things differently and better. Stef le Fèvre from the City of Amsterdam talks about what’s happening in the Amsterdam Area and what we can do to make a positive impact.

In 2016, the Utrecht Sustainability Institute and the Amsterdam Economic Board organised a Circular Economy Lab to discuss how to make the mattress industry more circular. Mattresses currently represent the largest waste stream within the household waste category. Each year, consumers discard more than one million used mattresses – enough to fill the entire Amsterdam Arena all the way to the roof. Year after year after year. The vast majority of these discarded mattresses are incinerated.