99% will end up here, dumped and burned in landfill.

Our earth at this point, it's not capable of absorbing the huge amount of clothing that's produced each year.

But what if all those wasted clothes could be saved and turned into something else?

I've come to a town in Italy called Prato.

This place has mastered a method to transform old scraps into new clothes.

What happens here is unique.

There are hundreds of companies in the small district, and each specializes in one specific aspect of the process, whether it's spinning, weaving or designing.

And today, incredibly, this town says it processes 15% of all recycled clothes in the world.

So this is your shirt.

If it's too old for the charity shop, it gets sent for recycling.

Here it's sorted by color, torn apart, washed and then the new recycled material is taken and transformed to make new clothes with minimal waste.

That was very quick.

Let's go through the process again.

You donate clothes.

They arrived here from lots of different countries.

All the garments that can be sold secondhand are taken to this company nearby.

Here, not only are they separated by color, but also by material.

I think these used to be trousers.

(How many clothes do you recycle here?)

(About 25 tonnes every day)

The clothes are put in this.

It's called a carbonizing machine.

It eliminates impurities from the wool.

Then they go through this.

It's like a giant washing machine.

They're shredded, cleaned and dried.

This is the final result.

Your old clothes have been transformed into these fine, fluffy wool fibers.

So at the end of the process, this is what the new recycled materials look like.

They're placed here until a fashion brand buys them and uses them to make clothes.

Some people might say that you are using trash to make clothes.

(This might have been the case a few years ago. )

(The word "rubbish" was an insult.)

(But now, many brands─ they buy my product because of it.)

(Because they know that reusing resources is going to save the planet. )

Recycling wool is great for the environment.

CO2 emissions are more than halved compared to when clothes are made from new material.

We have an immediate impact on animal welfare because you reduce the stress that you have to put on the animals to get the wool.

Almost complete elimination of dyes because the way the wool is recycled is an assortment by color.

This is a method that's been passed on from father to son.

The culture in Prato is the kind of culture that we need across the entire fashion industry because it is based on collaboration that are local but are capable of showing how, if these things are taken [onto an] international and global scale, the entire industry could benefit.

The people of this town were forced to recycle clothes because they couldn't afford new ones.

Now their methods, which have been honed over the past 100 years, could offer a way forward for a more sustainable fashion world.