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Creative gifts improvised from waste

It’s important to remember the difference our collaborative financial strength can make on our environment. Regardless of whether you want to change the quantity of plastic in the oceans, you’re shocked by the magnitude of food wastage, or you wholly believe in the circular economy, maybe it’s time to reason outside the (gift) box.

Shopping for the consumer doesn’t have to be a time of financial recklessness, and we can begin to alter the norm and make an actual statement about the type of stuff we want to purchase, through thorough purchasing and recycled gifts. What we do here is to carefully look through a range of innovative products, materials, and recycled gift options to guarantee your gift-giving is done sustainably.

E-Waste -> Jewelry

As the desire of consumers for new devices continues to build up, E-waste stands as one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world. The sudden increase in waste production in the last ten years has become more complicated because of the many problems regarding the efficient recycling of compound devices. Luckily, some companies hope to exploit this new resource and alleviate the task of recycling outfits.

Pentatonic, a German-based company, takes a comprehensive approach to recycling of e-waste, to the extent of recycling the glass of smartphones- which is typically separated and moved to landfill in the orthodox e-waste recycling process. At the moment, Pentatonic gives a range of fashionable pendants molded with recovered gold and silver gotten from electronic devices- any eco-conscious lover can get impeccable recycled gifts as they deliver to anywhere in the world.

Agricultural Waste -> Dyes

The current reliance on chemical dyes has made the old practices that involved the use of natural colorings become old fashioned, even though; natural dyes have been around for ages. Most of the dyes currently used in the textile industry consume a lot of water (running into millions of liters) during processing and are very dangerous to the environment.

Nowadays, companies are changing to the old-fashioned methods of using effluents from agriculture to produce dyes in bulk to be used in fashion industries. G-Star Raw, a famous denim manufacturer, is pioneering this idea by its partnership with Archroma, and are manufacturing a range of unisex outfits dyed using effluents from nutshells, olives, beetroot, and palm leaf. They’re the right choice for anyone with a taste for sustainable fashion.

Citrus Fruit -> Orange Fiber

Over 40 million tons of citrus waste is generated globally, having high acidic content, slow decomposition rate, and probable pesticide contamination, and all this stems from the love we have for orange juice (alongside other citrus products). Luckily, some manufacturers can transform all the peels into recycled aesthetic gifts.

Orange Fiber, an Italian company, specializes in transforming orange peels into luxury fabrics. In 2019, the company partnered with H&M, after receiving many accolades and awards in the last five years, to produce the Orange Fiber X H&M Conscious Exclusive collection, and also joined forces with Italy’s Salvatore Ferragamo’s exclusive fashion house.

Plastic Bottles -> Furniture

Plastic pollution can never be overemphasized, and for upcoming interior designers, Luken Furniture, a company based in Mexico, has got your back. They have recycled about 200, 000 bottles at the moment, each made with 100% recycled plastic and are aesthetic in appearance.

They deal on both indoor and outdoor furniture and also customize according to order, Luken Furniture believes in a circular economy. The company also produces a variety of furniture works from retrieved marble to complement its beautiful plastic pieces.

Ocean Plastic -> Innovative Fabric

We can’t turn a blind eye to the disturbing effects of plastics on our water bodies, especially with the discovery of microplastics in small scales. Nevertheless, there are a lot of companies that are capitalizing on the awareness of this problem and are revering the plastics before they decompose in the oceans and create further problems.

The first to do this was Pentagonia in 1993 when they started using ocean plastics in their well-known fleeces to reduce its dependence on petroleum-based raw materials. Since then, a whole lot of other companies have been using ocean plastics to make clothes and sneakers, some of them include; the revolutionary Waste2Wear, which uses blockchain technology to recycle plastic gifts gotten from the ocean and the Adidas Parley range.

Industrial Waste -> Ceramics

The central theme of most of the products on our list is pushing the idea of the circular economy forward- this is to find alternative uses for “waste” and preserve raw materials. Nonetheless, while many of the products use well-known waste, numerous other waste generated industries are not.

A group of designers from the Royal College of Art, in an attempt to “question the idea of waste”, have taken a little part of the Red Mud produced every year by the aluminum industry and partnered with research centers, factories and ceramicists to create a variety of ceramics, geopolymer concretes and glazes. The products are yet to be on sale but will be available in next year’s gift list.

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