Business
A Mexican Family Turns Textile Waste Into Sustainable Fashion
This story is part of a series of reports on life in Mexico City from Medill School of Journalism students in partnership with WTTW News. Read more about the project.
by Matt Jump and Kaitlyn Yaffe
Tlaxcala, Mexico — For 60 years, Tlaxcala, two hours outside of Mexico City, has been one of Latin America’s most important textile recycling centers.
But one family-owned business is imagining something different.
Scraps from factories across Mexico arrive at the Nucycles factory, sorted by color and fiber. They are broken down and transformed into raw cotton. On a recent walk through the factory, founding partner Mónica Guevara explained the process.
“Here they transform in a mechanical process,” Mónica Guevara said. “They transform (it into something) like cotton. It is the first step of our process.”
The cotton is spun into yarn, and the yarn is woven into fabric.
Behind it all are brother-and-sister team of Mónica and Eleazar Guevara, fifth-generation textile makers. Their great-grandfather sold blankets on trains during the Mexican Revolution. Their grandfather ran a wool factory. Their father built a recycling business. Then something changed the trajectory of the business.
“My father had an accident, a car accident, and he (died),” Mónica Guevara said. “My brother told me, ‘What am I going to do with the family business?’ I said, ‘Whatever you want, I will be there for you.’ And he told me, ‘I’m going to change the fashion world.’”
Traditionally, recycled textiles become low-value products — mops, rags and insulation.
But the Guevaras are making fashion. They produce tote bags, towels and their signature product, the Nupesh — a multi-use garment designed to create zero waste.
In 2016, they were named one of the 10 most innovative sustainability projects in the world by Fabric of Change, a textile innovation competition focused on sustainability, organized by Ashoka Changemakers and the C&A Foundation. Two years later, Levi’s selected the Guevaras for its Collaboratory program — the only project chosen from Mexico. They also appeared on Shark Tank Mexico.
“I saw a lot of scraps in the factories,” Eleazar Guevara said. “I saw a big business, but it wasn’t clear to all the people.”
Today, their products are sold online and are popular with tourists from around the world.
“He’s like the genius,” Mónica Guevara said of her brother. “He has the ideas. But I am the hands of the project.”
“If you buy cheap fashion, someone is going to pay,” she added. “It’s my story, it’s my family, it’s the effort of my brother, because nobody believed in him.”
Eleazar Guevara hopes the family tradition continues beyond him and his sister.
“We want to be a family that can transcend,” he said.
Fernando Poiré contributed reporting in Mexico City.
