Elvis & Kresse is an environmentally motivated design practice. By environmentally motivated I mean that we exist to solve environmental problems. We started by solving London’s hose waste problem, and over time found more and more wastes that no one had tackled yet. Wastes that didn’t deserve the indignity of landfill but were perhaps too niche for mainstream recycling companies to see potential in. By transforming burnt out redundant fire hose into luxury goods and accessories we have developed a reputation for alchemy. Our Fire Hose success proved that we could do it, that we had just a little bit of magic in our methods; this is why our small design practice is now involved in design projects with much larger companies, ones with equally large waste problems.
Being circular should be the ultimate in design, the pinnacle that every designer aspires to achieve. But it is tricky, it also has to be commercially viable and attractive to our wonderfully complex customers and clients. Our new leather reclamation project is set to achieve this.
We have been working on it for years. It has had clear, evolutionary phases, it is designed to adapt, to be re-imagined by consumers and other designers, to have a life long past our ‘tinkering’. It will only ever be truly circular if it ceases to be ours; if it becomes yours, theirs, and then someone else’s, in some other form. It could be our best work, but we won’t know that until we lose complete control of its future. How exciting.
Maybe this is why it is going to take a while for designers to truly embrace circularity. They are trained to make something that is the best, but if you are going to be circular you are aiming for the best being yet to come.
Last month we did a live interview for the Australian Waste & Recycling Exhibition (AWRE) direct from Tonge Mill in the UK. A week later we received the most incredible thank you gift; AWRE planted 74 trees, one in honour of each speaker. The trees were planted by Steve Joblin and his team at Flowerdale Landcare, Vic.
As many of you may remember, this area was devastated by bush-fires in the summer of 2009. For the past 8 years, Flowerdale and Kinglake community groups have been working endlessly to help the revegetate the district and entice the wildlife back. They are doing a mighty job.
No words, no cards, just trees... this was the best thank you we have ever received.
Imagine the impact we could have on climate change if the money spent on thank you cards was spent on planting trees. We have a few ex-tree planters in the wider Elvis & Kresse family, they were paid an average of $0.10 per tree. Your average gift card costs more than 10 times this amount, which means 10 trees.
And then we learned about One Tree per Child, which was launched by Jon Dee, the same Australian that interviewed us for AWRE. One Tree per Child is a charity that aims to help every primary school child plant a tree as part of their curriculum. The charity wants children to make a genuine, quantifiable contribution to our battle to protect the environment. It is a powerful idea. If all goes well that child can watch that tree grow over the entire course of their life.
www.15trees.com.au
www.onetreeperchild.com
And if we want to be really audacious... take a look at these guys. This is possibly the best potential use of drones.
www.biocarbonengineering.com
Kresse is currently in New York where we are launching our leather rugs with FLOR, it is an exciting collaboration with a company that shares our environmental values and goals to create a circular economy.
There is a little bit of Britain in SOHO tonight, with Pimms, Union Jack FLOR tiles... This is going to be so much fun!
The weather was mixed for this first of the May Bank Holidays, but that didn’t stop The Bowlerman from, touring around with our Weekend Bag. If you want to see what else he has been up to, check out thebowlerman on Instagram.
Elvis & Kresse featured with some of our fantastic fellow social enterprises, Jamie Oliver's Fifteen and Belu Water.
Heading to Madrid on July 1st for the launch of a new book Sustainable Luxury and Social Entrepreneurship and the awards for Sustainable Luxury. We can't wait to meet the other Pioneers and collect our copy, we are very proud to have been asked to contribute a chapter to the book!
Last week Kresse was in Madrid, to help launch a book we contributed a chapter for and also, unexpectedly, to receive the IE Award for Sustainability in Luxury. Here she is, among other winners, including Loewe, Soneva and the Danish Fashion Institute. Alexandra Cousteau presented the awards and was a big part of the whole week. Meeting the jury, IE staff, former winners and other Sustainable Luxury Pioneers definitely made us feel that this is a movement going from strength to strength. The venue for the awards was ideal - with recycled cardboard instead of steel as support beams - it was our first introduction to the work of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban.
Elvis & Kresse are very proud to have been awarded the Positive Luxury Blue Butterfly, a mark of Positive Living awarded to best in class brands and companies that have a positive impact on people and the planet. Read more…
Elvis & Kresse have reached the finals of Ben & Jerry’s Join Our Core Business Competition. Elvis pitched to a panel of judges in the filming set for the Dragon's Den - he gave a good account of himself and we got selected to go through to the next stage.
At a glittering ceremony in Deauville, Kresse won the 2011 Cartier Women's Intitiative Award. You can see more details on these awards here.
