PRADA’S LORENZO BERTELLI AWARDS HEALTHY SEAS AT THE GREEN CARPET FASHION AWARDS, ITALIA 2019

• Prada’s Lorenzo Bertelli presented Healthy Seas with the Circular Economy Award at this year’s Green Carpet Fashion Awards, Italia

• The accolade was awarded to Healthy Seas for their dedication to cleaner oceans

• Co-Founded by Aquafil, the Healthy Seas Initiative recovers ghost fishing nets which litter the seas, polluting oceans and kill marine life

Milan, 23rd September 2019: Last night Prada’s Lorenzo Bertelli presented Healthy Seas with the Circular Economy Award at the third annual Green Carpet Fashion Awards, Italia.

The event, organized by Eco-Age and Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI), took place at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, and celebrated the commitment of fashion houses, textile manufacturers and industry activists to integrate sustainability across the industry, as they work to embrace rapid change while preserving the heritage and authenticity of fashion.

During the evening, the Circular Economy Award was presented to the Healthy Seas initiative. This award highlights the importance of integrating circularity into the fashion industry through reutilising waste streams and optimising resources – an essential component of moving the industry in a more positive direction.

Veronika Mikos, Project Coordinator, Healthy Seas said, “We are so delighted that the Healthy Seas Initiative has been honoured on such a high-profile global stage. This award celebrates the efforts of our team to help eliminate marine pollution in order to restore the ecological balance in the world’s seas and oceans. This work is essential, and through partnering with Aquafil we are able to ensure that these discarded materials not only stop polluting the environment but become useful resources instead.”

Carlo Capasa and Livia Firth said, “The Healthy Seas Initiative deserves to be celebrated for its selfless work to help clean up our oceans, through a dedicated team of volunteers. Importantly, we are championing the collaboration of non-profit and for-profit organisations, to help move us towards this essential goal. The Circular Economy is a topic of growing significance, and the need to preserve our environment through waste recovery and regeneration is pressing. By working with Aquafil, they are helping to close the loop on the urgent waste crisis that we are facing. We honour the fact that such a committed group of people are playing a part in this essential task.”

Healthy Seas is a non-profit initiative founded by of an environmental organisation of volunteer divers and 2 sustainable businesses. It aims at cleaning the seas of marine litter, specifically, discarded fishing paraphernalia such as derelict nylon fishing nets. After their removal from the seas, the nets are transported to the Aquafil plant where they are blended with other forms of discarded nylon to create ECONYL® regenerated nylon yarn that can be used in a wide variety of applications from fashion and accessories to interiors. Aquafil collects waste plastic material from all over the world through different programmes and initiatives, of which Healthy Seas is a wonderful example.

-ENDS-

PRESS CONTACT: ECO-AGE

Emily Turner – [email protected] – T. +44 7927 339354
Becca Hesketh –[email protected]. T. +44 7921 339442

Notes to Editors:

Healthy Seas
The mission of ‘Healthy Seas, a Journey from Waste to Wear’ initiative, is to remove waste from the seas, in particular fishing nets, for the purpose of creating healthier seas and recycling marine litter into textile products. The recovered nylon fishing nets will be transformed and regenerated by Aquafil into ECONYL® yarn, a high-quality raw material used to create new products, such as socks, swimwear, sportswear or carpets. Since its founding in 2013, Healthy Seas has collected over 500 tonnes of fishing nets with the help of volunteer divers and fishermen.
The discarded, lost, or abandoned fishing nets are sometimes called “ghost nets” because they appear invisible underwater and continue to catch fish and other marine animals without human involvement. They are plastic waste which remains in the seas for hundreds of years and does not biodegrade. Millions of marine animals, including sharks, dolphins, seals and turtles get entangled in these nets leading to suffering and eventual death. Every year, some 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is lost in the seas and oceans.

www.healthyseas.org