Trend: Designed Recycling

With cool design ideas companies are turning trash into limited edition products.

Trend Description:
Designed Recycling takes the fine idea of recycling used materials a step further. By adding trendy design, companies are turning trash into hip new products. Due to the reused materials, most fashionable items come in limited edition, which makes them even more desirable. First discovered by the Swiss company Freitag, more companies are taking on to this idea, producing fashion, shoes and accessories for a better world of hip and cool.

Please also read our trend posting “Green Revolution”

Cases:

Terra Plana
According to its own website, Terra Plana aims to be the most innovative, sustainable designer shoebrand in the world. Using eco-friendly and recycled materials such as coffee bags, jackets, shirts, jeans, leather car seats, fireman’s trousers, military parachutes, recycled rubber soles, and even recycled cards for shoeboxes, Terra Plana is helping to reduce the amount of garbage dumped into UK landfills. More than 900,000 tons of garbage each year is made of reusable textiles. But Terra Plana does more than just recycle; Terra Plana recycles with style. The sneakers are limited edition, the design is clever and the names relate to the reused material. For the design “Escape”, for example, Terra Plana used tattered prison blankets. The slip-on “Jack” is made from various jackets and fastens with four actual coat buttons.

Alchemy Goods
For Alchemy Goods, the name is the message. By recycling material for their bags they “turn something of lesser value into something of greater value”, especially ecological value. Therefore, states the website, “each Alchemy Goods bag purchased represents one lesser part of our world destroyed.” For the bag’s exterior, Alchemy Goods mostly uses inner bicycle-tubes. For the strap the company uses seat belts stripped from cars discarded on local junkyards. Finally, the Alchemy Goods logo is imprinted with a number which states the percentage of the bag, by weight, which is made of recycled material.

Freitag
Established by two bike-riding designers in 1993, Freitag was probably one of the very first to work with the concept of recycled design. Living next to a truck route in Zurich, the two friends had the idea to make themselves tough messenger bags out of truck tarpaulins. The concept soon took off. And still, every single bag is a handmade original. Made out of used truck tarpaulins, car seat belts, bicycle inner tubes, and used airbags, the Swiss company developed a concept which even lets the consumer customize their own bag. Freitag bags come in all sizes, from pocket books to suitcases.

YÖ
The New York-based designer YÖ reuses old vintage men’s dress shirts and combines them with simple cotton T-Shirt to individualized outfits for fashion victims. Customers can choose the color of the T-shirt, available dress shirt, and pick one of YÖ’s individual styles. Each design piece is absolutely unique.

Trend Impact:
As consumers become more and more eco-conscious, companies will come up with new twists to add ecological value to their products. Targeting the young, hip urban trend-setter, the special design based on the usage of recycled material also adds a certain “cool-factor”, making the hand crafting worth its money. Another plus is, that no design product made out of recycled material is ever the same, creating the kind of uniqueness people desire. We will soon see more fashionable items made out of former trash.

Links
Terra Plana

Alchemy Goods

Freitag

YÖ

Thank you to The Thrillist

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