Prato

The Municipality of Prato (around 200,000 inhabitants) is famous worldwide for its textile district, which represents about 3% of European textile production. The Prato textile industry, despite the economic difficulties and the major market transformations, is still active and vital: the urban policy of productive re-organization based on the circular economy principles, is recognized at EU level as a model for urban economies improvement.

Prato has been always a model of innovation in this sector having historically based its industrial fortune on the reuse of waste from the textile process and on the reuse of second-hand clothing from all over the world. The recycling techniques of these fractions - that would otherwise be considered a waste - started at the end of the XIX century – led to consider Prato one of the most advanced and innovative industrial city in Italy.

With this mind-set, part of the DNA of the City, Prato anticipates by decades a behaviour that today is promoted by the “green economy” principles and the intelligent management of productive chains in the logic of Circular Economy.