What We Carry': The Prada and National Geographic series that shows the process of the Re-Nylon collection

Prada’s environmental ideology has inspired the launch of the Prada Re-Nylon regenerated nylon collection. To communicate and highlight the processes behind this innovative product line, National Geographic, a partner of the fashion house, has produced a short audiovisual series entitled ‘What We Carry’.

In this way, the supply chain of this unique project is shown through an extraordinary journey through all the continents of the world. A total of five episodes in which the different recycled materials that make up the ECONYL® yarn are discovered, allowing viewers to delve into the workings and processes of the factories and facilities that produce this sustainable fabric.

EPISODE 1: ARIZONA (USA)

The first episode teleports us to Phoenix, Arizona, to the first US carpet recycling facility where up to 16,000 metric tons a year are recycled. Less than 3% of the 1.6 million tonnes of carpet discarded each year in the US is recycled. In this video, actress and Prada reporter Bonnie Wright and National Geographic explorer and creative conservationist Asher Jay show us one of the sources of ECONYL® nylon yarn.

EPISODE 2: CAMEROON (AFRICA)

In the second episode we follow Adut Akech, South Sudanese-Australian model and Prada reporter, and Joe Cutler, National Geographic explorer and freshwater conservationist, as they travel to Lake Ossa in Cameroon to talk to local experts and see another facet of Prada‘s Re-Nylon supply chain.

EPISODE 3: NEW ZEALAND

The third chapter takes us below the surface of the ocean in Mahana Bay, off the coast of New Zealand. It deals with the problem of ghost nets: fishing nets that are lost or abandoned in the ocean. Some 640,000 tonnes of nets are dumped in the ocean each year, affecting wildlife and having a devastating effect on the subsurface ecosystem.

Alex Fitzalan, Australian actor and Prada reporter, joins National Geographic Explorer Asha de Vos, Sri Lankan marine biologist, ocean educator and pioneering blue whale researcher in the northern Indian Ocean, as they follow Rob Wilson, co-founder of Ghost Fishing New Zealand and a group of volunteers in removing harmful ghost nets from the seabed as part of the Healthy Seas initiative. This is a global non-governmental organisation that aims to remove large amounts of marine debris. Even the ghost nets recovered by Healthy Seas contribute to the production of ECONYL®, whose threads are woven into Prada Re-Nylon.

EPISODE 4: CHINA

For the fourth installment of the series, National Geographic Explorer, journalist Hannah Reyes Morales and Chinese actor and Prada reporter Wei Daxun visit the Parawin garment factory in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, southeast China. In collaboration with Aquafil, Parawin is committed to recycling discarded textile offcuts: the offcuts are sorted by fibre content and regularly transported to Aquafil‘s base in Shanghai and then transformed into ECONYL® regenerated nylon yarn.

EPISODE 5: SLOVENIA

The fifth and final instalment of the series is set in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a country that has become the hub of a new regenerative and sustainable industry, with more than 40,000 tonnes of recycled material a year. Prada reporter Amanda Gorman – America’s first youth poet – and engineer and architect Arthur Huang, pioneer and National Geographic explorer, take us inside the ECONYL® production plant with Giulio Bonazzi, President and CEO of Aquafil. Thanks to the intricate chemical recycling process of depolymerisation, tons of collected waste are transformed into pristine ECONYL® yarn.