The city of Girona has begun implementing a new waste collection system using smart containers. From now on, there will be a separate container for each type of waste, and residents can dispose of their waste any day of the week and at any time of day. An identification card is still required to open the containers.

Millions of tons of oil cross continents and seas to end up in the cramped closets of Western citizens. Polyester in all its forms, synthetic fibers that can only be destroyed by burning, fabrics treated with toxic substances that poison rivers, plants, animals, and people. We live in oil, we sleep in oil, we sweat oil. Many of these garments, presented as attractive and desirable in the physical and virtual windows of stores, are not so different from garbage bags. But so cute, so shiny. Mass advertising makes us deposit all our longings for beauty and seduction into this unsustainable, ugly, and uncomfortable packaging. We attribute countless meanings to clothing, linked to personality, sexual attraction, and status (now masked with words like style, glamor either good taste), romantic and professional success, and above all, we believe that our individuality resides there, the unique expression of who we are. Except that, with a glance at the daily catwalk of any city street, it turns out we're all dressed the same: we're nothing more than obedient soldiers of the powerful army of the fashion system.

Overwhelmed, pressured, and facing costs that threaten to overwhelm them. This is the current situation in Catalonia for many organizations and companies, many in the third sector, dedicated to the selective collection and sorting of clothing and textiles deposited in designated containers for reuse. The sector is facing a twofold problem: on the one hand, a massive and ever-increasing volume of clothing and textiles complicates management at facilities across the country. On the other hand, there is the glut of secondhand clothing in international markets, where the sorted materials used to find a market. If they cannot sell, the management costs become unsustainable for these social enterprises.

Just when we've barely recovered from the commercial bombardment of Black Friday and with the Christmas campaign already underway in stores for days, The ARA publishes an investigative report today which holds a mirror up to us as consumers, in this case, of clothing and footwear. Most of us renew our outfits at a dizzying pace season after season, while nearly a third of the garments Europeans have in their wardrobes (30%) haven't been worn for over a year. And what happens to the number of items we discard when they no longer fit?

In a warehouse on the outskirts of Sabadell, dozens of workers from the Fundació Formació i Treball (Training and Employment Foundation) rush to sort a constant stream of used clothing. Cotton shirts, sequined dresses, polyester sweaters, children's jeans. Each piece represents, in theory, a small act of solidarity and sustainability: a donation to "close the loop" of fast fashion. But the pace is frantic, the warehouses are full, and most of these garments, says Albert Alberich, founder and until recently director of Moda Re-, the Cáritas social cooperative specializing in textile recycling, "will end up in packages that will be shipped abroad." "The volumes are enormous; Europe simply doesn't have the sorting capacity to process them," he adds.

The textile reuse sector is at a critical juncture, as revealed by research published today by ARA. We spoke with Albert Alberich, founder of the social cooperative Moda Re- (Caritas), about its limitations, challenges, and potential solutions. How can we prevent the European system, which is meant to guarantee the reuse and recovery of tons of clothing, footwear, and textiles of all kinds, from becoming just another link in a global chain of environmental and social outsourcing?

The 3Cat platform has launched a talent show frivolous and grotesque. The title perfectly summarizes the theme: Clean and polishedIt's a competition hosted by Maria Gomez where the winner is the one who cleans up the most mess. The waste from a barbecue area, the stands of a football stadium, festival buses, campsite toilets, the sand on the beach after a drinking session, a hotel room, or a party venue. It works through team competitions, where participants are eliminated and a panel of experts evaluates their effectiveness. There are also challenges related to tidiness, organization, and specific cleaning tasks. The pretext for justifying this supposedly educational game is that it raises awareness about recycling. A failed excuse when it's obvious that all the mess the contestants have to clean is a staged and forced performance. The program itself is a generator of mess because it uses kilos and kilos of food waste, cardboard, glass, plastic, scrap material, and other waste just to create the garbage that the contestants will clean. It's as if they'd ransacked the shelves of a huge discount store, scattering everything and ruining it. A cleaning contest where the amount of trash is unbelievable already shows that it's more than just... show that of talent, especially from those who do it.

Now that we're entering one of the peak shopping seasons of the year, it's a good time to shed light on what happens to all the clothes we don't use. This Sunday, in the special report, you'll find the results of a Europe-wide investigation, in which an ARA contributor participated, tracing the surprising and often opaque routes of the clothes we discard. Using markers sewn onto various garments, a team of journalists reconstructed the journeys to major logistics hubs in countries like the United Arab Emirates and calculated the carbon footprint generated by this global system.

Three people were seriously injured in a fire at a recycling plant in the La Borda industrial park in Caldes de Montbui. The incident occurred around 7:00 a.m. this Friday at the warehouse of Tratamiento de Subproductos Industriales, a company dedicated to industrial recycling. All three are employees of the plant. A series of explosions, heard from the town, caused a fire that spread rapidly throughout the factory and was brought under control two hours later. The injured, as confirmed to Catalunya Ràdio by the mayor of Caldes de Montbui, Isidre Pineda, are three workers who were inside the factory at the time of the accident. All three were transported by the Medical Emergency Service (SEM) to Vall d'Hebron Hospital. One of the injured suffered burns to 20% of his body, and the other two suffered burns to 9% of their body, but in critical areas. The Catalan Fire Service (Bombers de la Generalitat) brought the flames under control around 9:00 AM, but were still working mid-morning, pouring water on the fire. They also had to remove pallets and other materials because the fire threatened to spread to adjacent warehouses. The emergency services plan to maintain a presence until nightfall to fully extinguish the blaze.

Since Girona changed the waste collection system with smart containersBy early 2025, garbage has become the city's biggest headache. For months now, the Girona capital hasn't had the traditional color-coded recycling bins. Instead, it's been multi-fraction containers opened with a personal card, and only the type of waste (containers, paper, waste, sanitary textiles, or organic materials) specified on the calendar can be disposed of. Similarly, in neighborhoods with lower waste density, there are door-to-door collections or mixed systems, while businesses, which generate a large amount of waste, must also manage their garbage on a specific schedule. However, seven months later, walking around the city, it's clear that this new collection system hasn't worked as expected.

The ecological transition seems to generate less and less enthusiasm among the working class, to the point that "climate denialism" continues to grow, driven by the far right. In a courageous article, the journalist. Joan Burdeos He spoke directly about the left's failure to positively lead this fight. It's paradoxical that, while the poor and working-class are the ones who suffer the most from the consequences of climate change, they are the ones turning their backs on it. If we don't address the causes of this disaffection, it will be difficult to reverse.

Luxury evolves in many ways, such as in the choice of materials it uses. A testament to this phenomenon is the new Atelier Next collection by Silhouette, specializing in high-quality eyewear and sunglasses. For this new launch, the Austrian brand has chosen materials such as vegan leather and recycled gold. In this way, Silhouette sought to merge the creative and technological innovation that has characterized it since its inception with new trends in the luxury sector. With the incorporation of more conscious customers, it must ensure that its products are more environmentally friendly.