Winner of the Sustainable Initiative of the Year 2023 Copy

The collaborative efforts of Alpinter, Nizam, and Closed Loop Fashion earned them the Sustainable Initiative of the Year 2023 award for their project titled “Piloting Circular Supply Chains in Pakistan for High Thermal Disaster Relief Blankets for Humanitarian Aid Purposes”, handed out in the context of the yearly AidEx event. 

In 2023, the alarming trend of increasing forced displacement continued, surpassing 110 million people globally (2022 figures), marking the highest recorded number according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). This is primarily due to a growing number of people fleeing violence, insecurity, and the consequences of climate change.

A poignant paradox in the humanitarian sector is that, while striving to alleviate the suffering of vulnerable and displaced populations, their actions often inadvertently contribute to climate change. Balancing the needs of refugees and environmental protection is a critical and interrelated challenge.

Through a two-year Public-Private Partnership project, the team addressed the highly pertinent issues of resource efficiency, fiber-to-fiber recycling, reduction of textile waste, and solutions for minimizing the extraction of primary resources in the production of disaster relief blankets and their packaging in the humanitarian aid sector.

This award serves as a testament to two years of unwavering dedication in creating humanitarian blankets entirely from 100% recycled materials without compromising any of the essential quality standards for these products.