Circular Fashion 'Nothing Stops Us' Championship

The aim of the 'Nothing Stops Us' (NND) Circular Fashion Championship is to energize and leverage the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the country, while encouraging and highlighting initiatives that develop sustainable production formats with the environment and their social surroundings. This is the purpose of the NND Circular Fashion Championship, a new invitation from the platform to value those who enter this market, but with a new outlook on their impacts.

The fashion industry is one of the main polluters of the planet. According to a 2019 UN report, 20% of wastewater and 10% of global carbon emissions come from the textile industry.

The aspiration to implement sustainable production models that promote the conscious and rational use of resources is more feasible than it seems. In fact, the NND Circular Fashion Championship has summoned more than 500 entrepreneurs from all over the country, from which 30 were selected to move on to the next phase. Now, the championship has identified the three finalists who will compete for the $10,000,000 prize.

The first finalist is from the O’Higgins Region. She is Juliana Mierez, CEO of My Way Eco Bag, a company that offers a line of bags and accessories made from natural jute and plastic and textile waste generated by different companies.

"We have social impact, as our workshop is made up of female heads of households from the commune of Machalí and environmental impact, as we work with different companies that give us their waste, which has allowed us to reuse more than 6 thousand kilos of plastics and textiles", Mierez explains about her initiative.

The second finalist is from the Tarapacá Region: Ecofibra Chile, a company dedicated to recycling textile waste to convert it into thermal and acoustic insulation panels.

"We have processed more than 500 tons of textile waste in a year and we convert them into thermal panels that contribute to the energy efficiency of homes, as they improve their insulation. Our goal is to be the number 1 option for the construction of social housing, in fact, we are in talks with Techo Chile to use our fiber as insulation material for all their construction solutions at the national level", says Franklin Zepeda, general manager of the venture.

The third finalist is from the Metropolitan Region. Her name is Isidora Azolas and she is co-founder and Sales and Alliances manager of Pagana, a women-led venture dedicated to creating unique clothing items from the reuse of jeans.

"This initiative started by identifying a huge problem that the heads of households in shantytowns have, as for many it is complex to access formal work, due to the demand for home care and children, so we thought about our venture focusing on the possibility of giving them the option of a formal job that would allow them to reconcile personal and work responsibilities", Azolas explains about Pagana, which currently has three permanent workers and two others who rotate according to product demand.

This edition of NND Circular Fashion was born as an initiative from Paris, as according to Fernanda Kluever, Sustainability Manager,

"For more than a decade, support for local entrepreneurship has been a fundamental pillar of our sustainability strategy through Celestial Awareness. With initiatives like this, we seek to make a real and concrete contribution to entrepreneurs who have recently faced many obstacles due to the pandemic and quarantines; however, despite these kinds of challenges, they have shown us the importance they have in the local economy with their ideas and their desire to grow and innovate in the face of what is to come."

"Our three finalists will meet in a final chapter where we can review each of their stories and in which they will face a jury that will have the difficult mission of choosing a winner. Regardless of the outcome, we are very excited