How is the Solar Forge Project you ask?
Our team at Queen Mary University have been hard at work throughout the pandemic. Although access to the labs became incredibly difficult and working remotely became the norm they somehow managed to experiment extremely wisely and here we are. We have a working solar forge!
We can now wash, dry, shred and melt littered aluminium cans with the power of the sun. And we can do this safely and inexpensively.
This image is of 'Pure Can' - melted in our forge and cast into sand. The little grip marks on one end are where we grabbed this first sample to pull it apart for strength testing. We are now in the phase of testing performance, ensuring that our cast pieces can function.
For now we are just enjoying this lovely victory. Our main goal was a safe and inexpensive solar forge. Mission accomplished!
We are nearing the finish line, we just need to perfect our casting methods and launch, hopefully by late 2021.
We get so many questions around this topic, so here goes...
There is a hierarchy among all of these ‘Re’ words. Some are more important than others and need to be tried first. We all share limited resources, we are all facing incredible challenges like climate change and rampant biodiversity loss. If we want to save our civilisation then we can’t just stand still, we have to do more. We have to actively solve problems and bring back a balance, a harmony with the natural world, and a deep and abiding respect for all people.
This means that your activities are actively making the world better. You are not depleting natural resources, you are building them up. You aren’t exploiting people, you are fostering communities. Elvis & Kresse have moved to our new HQ, New Barns Farm, in order to launch a regenerative agricultural project; along with producing lovely crops (grapes and wine in our case) our main aim is to increase topsoil, sequester carbon into the soil, improve overall soil health and design for biodiversity and complexity. This will be a regenerative farm.
We need to slow down. We need to think long and hard about what we are buying and why we are buying it. Who made it? Were they paid well? How was it made? Was it energy intensive or chemically intensive? What are the overall impacts of this product?
We don’t need clothing to be delivered in an hour, we don’t need items that we only intend to wear once. We need to reduce our consumption and take pride in what we do own. We need to cherish raw materials, water, food… our lives literally depend on it.
This is the category of Reuse. Essentially this means that you are not making a material change, you are using the material as it is. Elvis & Kresse rescue or reclaim all of our materials. We collect them when they are considered waste by their custodians and we take on the challenge to re-invent them. But we don’t alter the materials. Take our fire-hose for example. We don’t shred it, melt it, and make a new material. We don’t dye it or treat it with chemicals. We cut it, we clean it, we split it, we cut it again and then we sew it or rivet it, making new goods from old materials. As our pieces are more valuable than the decommissioned hoses we started with our work is considered to be upcycling. You could also say that we repurpose our materials, because we give materials that had one life a completely different future.
We are also kind of second because our choices are designed to help you reduce consumption. We don’t use virgin materials, which means we are reducing the overall burden of creating something new from something new. We don’t make seasonal collections either, which means we don’t want you to replace the belt you bought last year with a new design. We want you to keep your belt on your jeans until your jeans die and then move your belt to your next pair. If you grow or shrink we will help you grow or shrink your belt accordingly. We make classic pieces, not this season’s trends, we want them to work for you year in, year out.
This is the practice of collecting materials back, breaking them up into their constituent molecules and starting again. The recycling of metal globally is somewhat efficient; we collect, melt and re-manufacture steel and aluminium particularly well but there are rare earth metals that we are recycling at rates much lower than 30%. The recycling of plastic is patchier still. A whopping 91% of plastic just does not get recycled. If it is recyclable but does not get recycled, then what is the point?
Whether that be in an incinerator (even if it is an incinerator that produces electricity as a by-product it is still a total defeat to be burning precious resources), a landfill site, or illegal dumping.
This is where we are. In the UK we fail to recycle 2 billion aluminium cans each year because we put these cans in the wrong bins. We also litter (i.e. we illegally dump) 16 million aluminium cans each year into the landscape where they, along with other littered drinks containers, lead to the deaths of 3-4 million small mammals (just one of the many facts that spurred us on to invent a solar forge). This is a truly noble material that is perfectly recyclable. Recycled aluminium is more than 90% less energy intensive to generate than new, mined aluminium. So even if recycling is the 4th best practise it is still absolutely crucial.
Learn to love your 'Re' words, learn the hierarchy. Regenerate, reduce, reuse, recycle…
Elvis & Kresse started with reusing, and then embedded reducing along the way. Now we are on this farm to regenerate... Slowly but surely we are working our way towards the best solutions.
Over the next few years we will have many updates from our new HQ, New Barns Farm, as we gradually bring it to its full, regenerative potential. Here is our first post!
On the 2nd of August, 2021, we were granted planning permission. This permission has two parts, we will now be able to build our new workshop (more on that later) and also construct our wetland sewage treatment system. Elvis & Kresse move pretty fast, so three days later on the 5th, the diggers arrived and the wetland started to take shape almost immediately.
I could talk about sewage all day - how poorly we treat it, how often we simply expect our rivers and seas to absorb it, and how much of a resource it is. Most rural properties in the UK have septic tanks which require constant emptying, or which leach waste water into the ground. On our farm we wanted something truly world class, an entirely passive nature based solution, and after months of research we found Biologic Design.
Jay and his team, Kenton and Dilwyn, have been with us for a week now, carefully constructing swales and ponds, working with the natural contours of the farm land. Our waste will first go through a passive separator, the solid will go to a chamber filled with worms (and in 9 months it will be the most beautiful compost) and the liquid will enter the wetland where it will pass through soil, rootzone, and plants along 120 meters of swales before it ends in a stunning pond, a biodiversity hotspot, where believe it or not, you can swim. Jay, Biologic's founder, is a microbiologist, a permaculturist, and has been building wetland systems for over 20 years. He knows what to plant, and where, to ensure that we have a diverse mix of species which can each do its job to clean our water. His wife, Clara, propagates and grows the plants.
Our wetland will take a year to fully establish. We are building it now, so the groundwork is done. This fall we will do some of the planting and next spring we will finish the planting work. By next summer we will be both in full 'flow' and in full bloom.
None of our sewage will leave our site. And the precious water which we will be treating (with Biologic's expert help and nature's millennia of experience) will be available for wildlife, swimming, irrigation and giving back to our aquifer. Instead of losing the nutrients in waste water we will be retaining them to grow thousands of plants, from sedges and reeds to willows to walnuts.
The wetland is crucial for our regenerative mission. Water brings life and biodiversity. Water means insects, amphibians, and birds. Holding water on site will make us resilient. Our worm based solid compost will feed our soil.
Did we need diggers to construct the wetland? Yes. But once this is built we will never need to move sewage from the site again, ever. Once this is built the winner will be nature, and yes, we will sleep just a little bit easier.
If you want to come and see the system, just let us know. Even unfinished, it really is a joy to behold. Within hours of the first pond being dug, the first visitors arrived... dragonflies.
Q&A
Many of the materials that we rescue are composites, most of the time complex composites, and there is a good reason for this. At Elvis & Kresse we specifically target materials that are not currently "recyclable", ones which do not currently have a future. The reason why composites often have no hope is that they simply can’t flow through our traditional recycling systems.
Glass, certain plastics like PET (the kind of plastic in single use water bottles for example), and most metals like steel or aluminium. To oversimplify, these materials can be chopped up, melted down, and made new again. The recycling systems in the UK are designed for volume, to extract the most material and retain the most value. They are not, however, designed for niche, complicated materials and certainly not for composites where the blend of materials is always changing. Globally we have invested trillions in recycling equipment and infrastructure, but it is specialised; if it is designed to recycle aluminium it won't work for something like disposable nappies (which, by the way, can only be recycled in one or two local authorities in the entirety of the UK so don't even think of putting them in the recycling unless you have an ironclad guarantee from your council that they are really being recycled). Life would be easier if we were legally obliged to only design products which we could already recycle with the equipment we already have.
Our signature material and the heroic material first used in our Fire-hose Collection is, of course, decommissioned fire-hose. Fire-hose is not one material. It is made from a double wall jacket of nitrile rubber that is extruded through and around a nylon woven core, which is then cured. The woven nylon is an absolutely crucial part of the design, think of it as the skeleton that basically maintains the structural integrity of the hose. The rubber and the nylon are married, you can’t separate them. You can’t chop up the hose and re-melt it as the nylon fibres would get in the way.
The Printing Blanket that we rescue and re-engineer, you will find it in our matt black 'Print Room Collection', is the same. It is a multi-layered sheet, which includes layers of rubber that are laminated to canvas. Currently there is no way to completely mechanically separate these layers for recycling. What do Elvis & Kresse do? We split this material, but we do not 100% separate it. We create two layers, both ready for reuse in our collections and as packaging.
Tea Sack, yet another material we reclaim, poses another complicated problem. Tea sack (not to be confused with tea bags!) is shipped in largely paper-based sacks. These sacks are used to import/export loose tea and generally includes three layers of kraft paper with a final layer that is laminated to foil and polyethylene. This final layer is laminated so that the tea can be completely protected from oxygen and sunshine; both of which degrade tea and steal its aroma. Our team manually separate these layers by hand, iron them flat, and reuse each layer for our leaflets and packaging. Stay tuned too, because we are still working on tea sack innovation!
I often think of composite materials as "Frankenfabrics". In fashion we encounter so many kinds of blended textiles, like polycottons, wool/acrylics, denim/spandex, these are all Frankenfibres. Although there are some amazing technologies in development, which can separate out the polymer content from the natural content, I think we need to think much more carefully about why we are combining these materials in the first place. Many are found in sportswear, and the blend is considered vital for performance, but what about how it performs for the planet, for generations to come?
In a perfect world nothing should be legally manufactured that can’t be easily and completely recycled or composted. This ideal world would be circular. We wouldn’t take, make and waste, we would instead keep all materials either within the natural system, or in perpetual reuse or recycling. I think we have the ingenuity to do this, but we definitely need legislation in place to level the playing field and unleash our creativity. The ‘free’ market has never really been beneficial for the environment or the millions of people (in farming, mining, making, distribution) who are consistently exploited. The free market chases profits not perfection.
At Elvis & Kresse we are chasing perfection.
Over the last few years our donation to Barefoot College has been focused on building capacity in Guatemala. The results have been truly amazing, and proof that when you unleash goodness it has a tendency to multiply.
Our first objective was to create scholarships for women to train as solar engineers. Now we have several Guatemalan women who have graduated and are actively transforming the energy future of their communities.
And this is where the story gets very interesting. These women have not stopped at solar, they are building businesses, they are sharing their learnings, they are empowering other women in their communities. During the pandemic our donation largely helped to fund a training hub in Guatemala. Traditionally all women would go to India, to the home of Barefoot College, to receive their training, but now there will be a College in South America.
What we are most excited about is that we have just received our first 'green beans' from B. Barefoot in Guatemala. Several Barefoot graduates have set-up an organic, renewably powered, fairly traded, community owned coffee enterprise and we are bringing the coffee here to the UK.
As I write this the first beans to arrive in the UK are being roasted and we can't wait to be able to introduce this coffee to our wider community.
When we started our partnership with Barefoot College we had no idea how it would evolve and how transformational Barefoot's model would prove to be. If you want to put it in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals:
Our partnership with Barefoot College is geared towards tackling as many SDGs, simultaneously, as possible. By offering scholarships to women from rural communities, often with no experience or formal education, to train as solar engineers (who subsequently deploy and maintain renewable energy infrastructure in their communities), by further funding Barefoot’s ENRICHE programme (which delivers health education, among other things) and by supporting a new Barefoot hub for South America (which is spawning local businesses for coffee, chocolate and other goods, as well as Pending B Corps) we contribute to virtually all of the Goals:
Goals 1 (No Poverty),
Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-Being),
Goal 4 (Quality Education),
Goal 5 (Gender Equality),
Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy),
Goal 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth),
Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure),
Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities),
Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production,
Goal 13 (Climate Action) and of course,
Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) as this wouldn’t be possible without our unique partnership.
We also had no idea that there would one day be coffee, and the potential for a genuine trading partnership between ourselves and our former beneficiaries.
If you would like to stay up-to-date with their coffee progress, get in touch!
If you would like to learn more about Barefoot College, you can find them here.
This year, our donation of £30,600.00 is not only our largest one made to them, but it is also enough to fund TEN scholarships!
Firefighters are there when we need them. When they get a call, they drop everything, suit up, and jump in the truck. They run toward danger.
When we started Elvis & Kresse our first goal was to rescue London's decommissioned fire-hose. When we promised to donate half of our profits from our Fire-hose Collection to the Fire Fighters Charity we had no idea where this promise would take us, and what an impact it would have.
Unwittingly, but overwhelmingly willingly we have created this truly virtuous circle. Firefighters rescue us, we rescue the fire-hose, and the proceeds help to rescue firefighters and their families in their time of need.
If you are in any doubt of how vital the Fire Fighters Charity is, please read these testimonials by just a handful of the people they help:
Kevin: “It wasn’t just help with my injury, but you get help with all sorts of things, from sleep to eating healthy or mental health awareness. The range of support they have for all sorts of things, it was mind-blowing. I didn’t realise they offered half of what they do. The Fire Fighters Charity got me back to being able to work and be fully functional. In my opinion they’ve saved my career and I’ll be forever grateful to them.”
Dawn: “My husband, Lee, had a really tough time at the beginning of the year, and after nearly having a breakdown was referred to The Fire Fighters Charity,” says Dawn. “He went down to Harcombe for a week and was offered so much support and advice that really helped him. I’m forever grateful that he had somewhere to turn and somewhere to go. He took real comfort from being there during what was a very difficult time for him.”
Richard: "I’ve realised that by being here at Harcombe: they’ve saved my life, just as much as if they’d run in and dragged me out of a house fire.”
As many of you know, we are a different kind of company. We don't celebrate turnover. We celebrate tonnes of material rescued, and money donated. This year we have been able to donate almost £100,000.00, with £66,977.83 going to the Fire Fighters Charity. In this difficult year, we certainly have a lot to celebrate!
We also wanted to give you a breakdown of the kinds of things this donation will cover and how incredibly efficient the Fire Fighters Charity is;
HOW DOES OUR DONATION OF £66,977.83 TRANSLATE INTO REAL IMPACT?
£4.50: To pay for the daily disposable PPE required for therapists at one of their centres
This means our donation, just for this past year, could be covering 500 in-person physio sessions, 500 virtual physio or psychological therapy sessions & exercise therapy sessions, 500 essentials food boxes and 1550 sets of PPE for therapists. If you remember our update from last year you will have noticed that the Fire Fighters Charity has had to adapt a lot of its programmes and treatments during the pandemic.
Congratulations to the FFC for their amazing work and congratulations to all of you, for all of your support. We so wish we could all be celebrating together right now!
Discover the Elvis & Kresse Fire-hose Collection Today.
Update April 28, 2021: We just received this amazing letter from the FFC, it is incredible how resilient and adaptable they have been!
This post has been a long time coming... we have been keeping some fairly big news under wraps since December!
Two years ago we knew that Elvis & Kresse was running out of space. When we arrived at Tonge Mill in 2013 I think it is safe to say that we never thought this would happen. There were just two of us. Now there are more than 20... In order to keep our team together we needed to find something within 5 miles of the Mill. We also needed a significant amount of space.
We started looking at potential sites in the summer of 2019 and found nothing. In the summer of 2020 we found our ideal site, but we lost out when it went to sealed bids. Rather amazingly, in late November we got a call from the estate agent, the winning bidder had fallen through and now the 17 acre farm could be ours, as long as we could complete the purchase in two weeks! On December 4th we became the proud owners of New Barns Farm, but it has taken until today to move in.
Why have we bought a farm you ask?
Originally we thought of a farm because they tend to have both space and buildings, and this is true of New Barns Farm, but this isn't the main reason. One of the commitments we have made, along with many of our fellow B Corps is to be Net Zero by 2030. In addition to that, and without knowing entirely what it might entail, we would like to be Net Regenerative in that same timeframe.
This puts us in an interesting position with respect to growth. Over the last century economic growth has largely been fossil fuelled, hence a call by many environmentalists for de-growth. We aren't sure that this is the right approach; we would rather build a business that can flourish and thrive, but only if its growth has vastly more positive externalities than negative ones. We can and should grow, but only if this growth is renewably fuelled, if more materials are rescued, if we can donate more to our charity partners. On a farm we can act directly, by choosing a regenerative path we can be abundant and positive, we can dramatically increase topsoil, we can sequester carbon, we can improve biodiversity.
We have a Carl Jung quote, always hung proudly in our workshop, you may have seen it in our social posts;
If we want to be Net Regenerative then we need to get our own hands dirty. We can't offset our carbon, we have to systematically weed it out and simultaneously put the same care and love into our soil that we continue to put into our decommissioned fire-hose. It will take time and we will make mistakes, but we have already been welcomed by our new neighbours and by the wider Regenerative Agricultural community. We have found willing advisors, mentors, and inspiration both globally and locally and we can't wait to get to work!
Although we are leaving Tonge Mill, the amazing space that has been both our home and workshop for almost 8 years, we are not wistful. It is time to do more now, and the Farm is absolutely the best place for us to do just that.
As the world starts to hopefully open up again, and as our new workshop starts to take shape (oh yes, a lot of restoration awaits!), we can't wait to welcome you to the new HQ and introduce you to the herd.
Meet, from left to right: Phil, Serena, Roger, Wayne and Tiger
Back in April we received a lovely message from a company we knew almost nothing about. Here is what they sent:
Of course, we said yes. And the beers are finally out! Do let us know if you spot them - they sell all across Belgium and the Netherlands.
We hope you are enjoying a lovely holiday break, now seemed like the right time to share some fun news, hoping for much more like this in 2021!
Some stories take a long time to unfold. You could say that this one started over 15 years ago when a fire-hose first caught my eye. Or you could say it started around 2 years ago, when the V&A decided to host an exhibition 'Bags: Inside Out'.
In early 2019 we met the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibitions curator, Lucia Savi, when she came to see our workshop in Kent. We had an amazing conversation about the history of carrying things, the genesis of the 'bag', and how we are not, by a long shot, the first bag makers whose work challenges the status quo; the exhibition includes an anti-slavery reticule bag from 1825!
The entire process has been an absolute delight. The museum purchased our classic, decommissioned red fire-hose Weekend Bag. It is now a part of their permanent collection. A team from the V&A came to the Mill to also make a film for the exhibition which features us and one of our design heroes and past collaborators, Bill Amberg. We were asked to contribute our ship-lapped zero waste hose, our rescued parachute silk, and our circular leather system; both of these are featured in a 'how-its-made', experiential space within the exhibition.
Image courtesy of the V&A, fire-hose right, parachute silk left!
The pandemic severely stalled the launch and has unfortunately meant that a mass weaving event, designed to inspire young people to embrace the circular economy, has been shelved for now. However, the exhibition is finally live and we are so happy that it will be in situ throughout 2021.
The Elvis & Kresse Weekend Bag is a statement about reuse, revalue, creativity, and giving. It fills us with so much hope that a piece like this, which delivers and inspires a more equitable future for the planet and its people, fits right in at the world's leading art and design museum.
Image courtesy of the V&A: Can you spot our Weekend Bag?
On the 19th of March, 2021, we are also participating in a panel, hopefully at the V&A, about the future of bag design. You can learn more or sign up here.
Our Weekend Bag is now officially and forever, iconic!!!
Last night we received an extraordinary phone call.
It was Nurse Sarah McNary, someone we have never met, calling from Massachusetts. She has a rather awesome tradition for thanksgiving. It isn't about gathering with family, or eating a turkey, it's about letting someone know how grateful you are for the work that they do. She wanted to tell us how amazing it was that we turn old hoses into beautiful things and donate 50% of the profits to the Fire Fighters Charity.
Sarah has been following us through our newsletters for three years. She likes to sew. She has a collection of US Military parachutes from her time serving on an American base in Germany. Just like us, she is going to upcycle them. She was full of stories about how tough the pandemic has been on her local fire crew and how their mental health is at risk. She and her partner take part in annual fundraising events to support them. She goes over with pizza, to chat, and provide informal counselling.
At this point in the call I was in tears.
Last night Nurse Sarah McNary brought the spirit of American Thanksgiving to our small Kent workshop in its purest form.
It's not everyday that you get a phone call from a hero who seems completely oblivious to their own goodness.
What is a Social Enterprise?
We are very proud to be a Social Enterprise. We are a special breed of business that exists to solve social and environmental problems and reinvests the majority (at least 50%) of its profits back into social and environmental projects. There are some big social enterprises, like the Eden Project and the Big Issue but many of them are small, in fact, around 9% of small businesses in the UK are social enterprises!
BUT. Don't mistake our size for a lack of impact. UK Social Enterprises employ 2 million people and contribute £60 Billion to the UK economy, which is about 3% of GDP.
To find a Social Enterprise near you, you can search by post code, region, mission or product/service at this link. Or look for this logo!
Why #BuySocial?
When you buy from a Social Enterprise you are maximising your money's positive impact on society and the environment.
For example, when you buy something from our Fire-hose Collection you are rescuing fire-hose from landfill, ensuring that it has a long and healthy second life, contributing to our annual donation to the Fire Fighters Charity, helping us to offer apprenticeships and work experience opportunities in our local community and you are supporting the manufacture of bags and belts that aren't just the best in the world, but the best for the world.
I would love to meet someone who does, I would love to hear their arguments. I would love to understand the mindset… in the same way that young FBI agent protagonists in films are so keen to study psychopaths and serial killers…
We have scientific proof that human beings are causing catastrophic climate change. We also spend most of our waking hours at work, and more than 75% of the British workforce is in the private sector. If businesses are not actively solving social and environmental problems then we shouldn’t be surprised that they are, instead, a root cause of both! If we want a healthy, happy civilisation and a planet that can continue to support all of us, then surely we need the majority of our human effort to be a part of the solution? We can’t solve these problems while we sleep. We can’t rely on the less than 25% of us that work in the public sector.
And apparently the UK public agree, with the B Lab UK and ReGenerate poll revealing that “76% of people believe business has a responsibility to protect the natural environment”.
In 2005, Elvis and I did not start a business; we initiated a rescue mission to ensure that London’s damaged, decommissioned fire-hoses would not end their lives in landfill. Our business solves waste problems. We give our fire-hoses a second life by transforming them into bags, belts, wallets and purses and then we donate 50% of the profits to the Fire Fighters Charity. We don’t have a balance between purpose and profit. If we aren’t solving waste problems, there is no revenue. When you have the privilege to start something from scratch, why would you travel down a dark destructive road paved with exploitation and environmental degradation? There is another road.
We are so proud to be a social enterprise and a B Corp. B Corps legally change the constitutions of their businesses, they put it in writing; the planet and its people are at least as important as shareholders. We are part of a growing community of businesses that know we are only going to ensure a future for everyone’s grandchildren if we spend most of our working lives dedicated to solutions, collaboration, equality and diversity… we must dedicate our efforts to each other and to this beautiful earth we share. The people who start and build and work in these businesses are our heroes and peers, they are our teachers. It is through this community that we learned the most important thing that we ‘design’ is not our products, but our business itself.
This is a resilient community, it prioritises stakeholders over shareholders, and it is embedded in its community. Elvis & Kresse doesn’t have a long, complicated supply chain. We are our supply chain. We have a team of dedicated craftspeople and during the pandemic we have collectively re-choreographed everything we do to make it socially distant and safe. We have the full support of the London Fire Brigade, Brigades across the UK and the Fire Fighters Charity. We have amazing customers who have supported us throughout because our mission is just as much theirs as ours.
Our businesses represent the best of the private sector, and possibly the best thing about us is that we want everyone to join. This is not an exclusive club. We will welcome any business, with open arms, who wants to use the pandemic as a moment to pause, and rethink. This doesn’t have to be a painful transition either, embrace the idea that change does not equal sacrifice. The fashion industry represents a systemic, structural failure. It might be good for shareholders, but it has not been designed to benefit everyone in its ecosystem. The earth pays, the ocean pays, the makers pay, the farmers pay, and the consumer pays. Our products could have been made by underpaid workers or with materials and practices that destroy the environment. But why would a sane, sentient person do that? We chose, instead, to be truly creative and as a result our business is a joy to be a part of.
I can’t promise that this kind of work isn’t hard. I can tell you that it is much, much easier to motivate yourself, your colleagues and your community behind worthwhile challenges. It genuinely is more fun to make things better than to make things worse.
