Prada’s new Re-Nylon initiative spans across five continents via land and sea. The luxury fashion house is spearheading a ground-breaking new sustainability initiative to create a renewable supply chain by using regenerated ECONYL nylon from discarded materials and products.
Prada has done a fun job of documenting the complex cycle along with the fascinating backstory behind the brand’s new sustainability program. Everything is captured through a series of branded short films; the series is entitled, ‘What We Carry.’ National Geographic produced Prada’s set of short films, which star an array of Prada reporters, global activists and National Geographic explorers.
In the second release of the ‘What We Carry’ short film, Prada follows South Sudanese-Australian model and Prada reporter Adut Akech Bior and Joe Cutler. Along with National Geographic Explorer and Freshwater Conservationist, they travel to Lake Ossa in Cameroon. Lake Ossa is one of Cameroon’s largest lakes, with a surface area exceeding 4,000 hectares.
A multitude of species call Lake Ossa home and provide a vital livelihood for members of the surrounding communities. Over the years, hundreds of used fishing nets have been discarded in its waters for decades, ultimately, clogging our ecosystems and proving fatal to plants and wildlife.
To combat this crisis, the brand tapped community group Net-Works to retrieve the nets from Lake Ossa. Collecting over six tons from the lake to date, these are re-sold, creating a valuable new revenue stream to benefit the local economy. These nets, together with other waste, are then recycled, de-polymerized and transformed into modern, ECONYL regenerated nylon. This is the exact nylon used to weave Prada’s regenerated nylon fabric and create the six styles featured in the new Prada Re-Nylon capsule bag collection.
Check out Prada’s full Re-Nylon Capsule collection below and to watch episode 2, visit Prada.com.
