Design partnership Elvis & Kresse explain how they created desirable bags and belts from London Fire Brigades waste
Kresse Wesling: Id always been really interested in the environment, so back in 2004 I went along to do an ISO 14001 course. Which was great in many ways you learn how to audit absolutely everything but was also really really tedious. There were a couple of guys from the London Fire Brigade along too and we all sat together in the back row, cracking jokes, that sort of thing. And it turned that theyd come along because they were trying to solve a few environmental problems. And one of them was that they had all these firehoses they were having to put into landfill and they just couldnt find any other use for it.
Basically if theres a hole in firehose which cant be fixed then you cant just cut it in half and use it anyway. A firehose has to be long so that you can reach the fire. And part of the hose was also just coming to the end of its 30-year lifespan. I went to visit them at work, and they had tonnes and tonnes of this beautiful, heroic material that was just going into landfill. I made a promise to them right then, that Id come up with a way to use it and Id give half the profits back to them. Theyve told me since they thought at the time that it was all hysterically funny and never really expected to hear from me again. But actually its ended being their longest-running, most successful recycling partnership.
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