Textile scraps: handle with creativity and care

In recent decades, the exponential growth of the world's population and rising living standards have led to increased demand for textiles as a natural consequence of basic needs, causing an uncontrolled increase in global textile production. The consequences have been catastrophic, with massive wastage of raw materials and energy incentivizing enormous waste production, turning its management into a global environmental issue. It therefore becomes imperative to reflect and investigate the need to develop recycling technologies in the face of resource scarcity, giving waste a key role through designing interventions and unveiling new perspectives on it. A paradigm shift is needed for the development of new sustainable models aimed at involving the entire production asset of the fashion system. Based on these premises, the paper aims to provide an overview of the fashion system with particular reference to the role of textile waste, illustrating the case study of the Prato textile district as an example of "applied circularity," adopting the hub organizational model as a tool for interpreting its strengths and weaknesses and drawing from it best practices. Sustainability today is no longer an option, but a necessity, and reinventing methodologies to reduce waste and conserve natural resources can be a viable alternative that fuels the role of design aimed at taking responsibility for creating new products from industrial waste.