The ‘Fem que Circuli’ project – which means ‘Let’s Make it Circulate’ in Catalan – aims to promote the circular economy in the tourism sector while facilitating labour opportunities for vulnerable people.
To achieve a circular economy in the tourism sector while creating jobs for vulnerable people, Fundació Deixalles partners with tourism companies and offers a free collection service for reusable materials such as furniture, textiles, electrical devices and decorative articles.
After collection, they provide companies with an environmental certificate that includes information on the CO2 emissions avoided through reuse. Additionally, they sell furniture and textile articles made in their upcycling workshops to the companies. In some cases, the materials used for the upcycled products come from the same hotel that provided the discarded items, for example, tailored bags made from discarded curtains.
Since the beginning of the project, in 2022, over 50 businesses and tourism associations have taken part.
The project has resulted in:
“The project is perfectly replicable and scalable. There is a big tourist industry in Spain, especially in the Balearic Islands. There are more than 400,000 tourist spaces in Spain. We are serving a very small percentage, and we know that hotels change their equipment or their furniture every eight or ten years. To scale up, we require the infrastructure to make it happen. We need more trucks and more warehouses, and for that we need more funds. However, it has become very expensive on the Balearic Islands to buy property.” — Fundació Deixalles representative
