TRANSCRIPT
In a small workshop in North Melbourne, a group of women with years of collective experience are hard at work.
Farah Shirkool worked in textiles in her homeland of Iran for 15 years. Migrants like her are able to employ their skills at this environmentally and socially conscious manufacturer.
“I'm happy because there are so many people here with different cultures and different backgrounds. Yeah, together it's very good, I'm very happy.”
The Assembled Threads enterprise also teaches women, including Ms Shirkool, new skills to progress in the industry.
“Sometimes I work on the sewing machine, but today I'm cutting for the first time.'
Reporter: 'Oh, first time! How has it been?'
'It's a little bit scary, but Maca teaches me.”
Vietnamese migrant Thi Le also says she's constantly learning new skills.
“I learned how to make zip, I learned how to do the tape, I've never done it before.”
As well as being an opportuntiy for refugees and migrants to socialise and find work, Assembled Threads has managed to save around 650 kilograms of material from going into landfill. The company's CEO is Edwina Walsh.
“We focused on high-viz vests originally because they are procured in their tens of thousands and they're going straight to landfill. And they're made of polyester which means they're not going anywhere for a couple of hundred years. So it's a big part of our textile waste and I think we need huge behavioural change. It's also an item that our team in their early stages can get on top of quite easily as well. It's not too complicated a garment to sew, so for us it was a good fit.”
The production of 1,500 re-used and recycled high-viz vests has earned the business two Victorian Premier Sustainability Awards.
Paul Murfitt is from Sustainability Victoria.
“It's just a great example of a circular economy enterprise. The really exciting thing about it, and I think why it landed at the top of the pile of awards is it does bring together social outcomes, it's got really strong employment outcomes as well as the sustainability credentials, so it's as I said, ticking a lot of boxes that we need to really focus on.”
Chief executive Edwina Walsh has a background in fast fashion. She says the pandemic and subsequent disruption to supply chains, presented new opportunities.
“I think COVID really showed us that we need manufacturing sovereignty of our garments. I mean, we're never going to be able to compete with the large manufacturing cities that are around the world, especially in Asia, but actually people do want to see things being made locally in Australia. That's what's really exciting for us, to see that burgeoning demand and being able to fulfill it.”
Now, she's embarking on another innovative project to turn discarded material from the vest production into sustainable concrete.
“And Sustainability Victoria is sponsoring much larger research of this concrete which is great, and some testing on a commercial site. So, really exciting to think that from a little orange vest, something really exciting could happen in reducing the footprint of concrete in construction.”
Every fibre going a long way, to build a circular economy.
