About a month ago we received a lovely email from a customer with a beloved family tent on her hands, it had finally given up the ghost. After years of providing shelter and happy family memories, it was no longer water proof and no longer usable as a tent.
Given that tents are often made of coated, woven nylon, and have lots of composite components and accessories they are not currently recyclable within the UK...
BUT.
They are definitely reusable. Our team deconstructed the tent, cleaned it, and re-manufactured every last inch into dust covers, handles, and other pieces of packaging. Traditionally we use failed parachute silk panels for our protective dust covers, which come in green, orange, gold or white. This tent was grey and red, so if you have recently placed an order and spotted some red or grey then you have been one of the lucky ones that have helped us rescue a wonderful family tent!
Rather amazingly, the rescued fabric has contributed to 248 different pieces! We ask ourselves "Why do we need new textiles?" and "Why are tents ever abandoned?" - Why indeed!
Give this video a watch to find out why donating half of our profits is so important to us, and why we chose Barefoot College as one of our charity partners for our Fire & Hide Collection.
This clip was filmed as part of a micro-series by Elvis & Kresse late in 2019.
A product or service simply isn't 'creative' if there is a path of destruction behind it...
We made this short film because we think it is time for the creative sector to truly step up. Every person who is lucky enough to have a creative job is facing an important decision. Are they going to use their practice to fight climate change, inequality, environmental degradation, and exploitation or not.
Hopefully this makes our position clear. Elvis & Kresse are going to fight.
And when we need reminding, we just look at our rescued fire-hose wristbands. Elvis's says 'Do what makes you proud', mine says 'Do More, Be Better'.
Lock-down has been very productive here. We have had lots of time to think, lots of time for R&D and we have been really happy to work both virtually and at a 2m distance in the garden at the Mill, with the incredible Katie Walker.
As those of you who have visited us will know, we have been experimenting with our leather system in all kinds of formats, including upholstery, but we have never been able to introduce a finished piece, until now.
Several months ago we got a call from Katie Walker, an award winning furniture designer, who was keen to see if we could upholster some of her pieces. Over the last few months we finally got some time to play with her Beam Bench. This piece was awarded The Furniture Makers’ Company, Bespoke Guild Mark no. 250.
Beam Bench is inspired by traditional cross-legged tables, blending Japanese style self-locking joints with curved legs. The lightness of its curves and the playfulness of the jointing are now further highlighted by our modular, rescued leather covering. The upholstery is held in place by removable stainless steel tubes making it easy to adapt or repair over time.
They are now available in our Homeware Collection.
In June 2013, almost 7 years ago, we moved both the businesses and ourselves from Bournemouth to Kent, to Tonge Mill. We have always felt lucky to be here, even when we had leaking roofs, rotten windows, and limited heat and power. During the lockdown we have felt this luck even more keenly. We have lots of space, lots of work to do, and the Mill pond is filled with ducklings!
Last year we had an amazing pair of visitors, Ali Heath spent the day interviewing us about our work and Alun Callender took some incredible photos. The result was a feature in Country Homes and Interiors, see below, which just came out. We thought we would share this piece now, and also give you an update on life at the workshop.
All online orders are still going out, Elvis and I live on site so the two of us have always been able to continue work. We have continually adjusted the space, during lockdown, to work out the best way to manufacture while ensuring social distancing. Then slowly, one-by-one, we started bringing the team back in. Although some of our team members have been able to work from home throughout, this was not possible for everyone as several of our machines weigh more than a tonne and certainly are not portable.
It feels incredible to be making, almost at full speed. We just can't wait until we can have everyone here and open the doors for workshops again to let you all back in too!
As many of you know we donate 50% of our profits to charity. In the case of our rescued leather, our partner is Barefoot College. Learn everything about our partnership and our first donations here.
Last year our donation was able to cover three scholarships. Three amazing women from Guatemala became fully fledged solar engineers and are now back home building and managing solar infrastructure for their communities.
This year we were all set to offer 6 scholarships. Thanks to your support, and increased demand for our rescued leather goods, we have been able to double our donation.
And then Corona virus changed a lot of things. Barefoot College serves and uplifts some of the most vulnerable people in the world. And now it may need to support them in new ways. We have made absolutely no restrictions on our donation, the charity is absolutely free to use these funds to best protect those in training, the Solar Engineers, and their communities and the wider Barefoot team and mission.
This is not the time for 'Business As Usual', but it is indeed the time for unusual businesses, like ours, to demonstrate what resilience looks like. There is no resilience without community. There is no resilience without an embedded respect for the environment and its people. We don't want everything to return to normal after this, we want it to evolve into something much more resilient!
We hope to update you on everything that we are doing with Barefoot College throughout the year, what is most important right now is that despite the pandemic our partnership is stronger than ever.
"Elvis & Kresse's latest donations helped us offer a further three women from Barefoot College's second Coffee Livelihood Curriculum scholarships for training to become Barefoot Solar Mamas at Barefoot College’s training campus in Tilonia, India.
From left to right in below photo.
The three of them are the first to acquire official Guatemalan passports in their family's history and Elvis & Kresse's donation has created this opportunity for them. By training as Barefoot Solar Engineers these three women will be able to return to their villages and implement clean, renewable solar lighting systems for their communities allowing them to reduce carbon emissions and improve social and economic outcomes.
During their time with Barefoot College they will also be trained in the Enriche Curriculum which provides digital training, education about their health and their human rights and trains them in skills which can be used to create livelihood opportunities when they return home. All Solar Mamas are trained first as students but then as trainers themselves, enabling them to train more solar engineers when they return to their villages and creating long term change for the most marginalised people around the world." - Barefoot College, 23/04/2020
One of the best days of the year for Elvis & Kresse is the day we complete our accounts. On this day we know how much we will be able to donate to our charity partners.
Since 2005 we have been donating 50% of our profits from our Fire-hose Collection to the Fire Fighters Charity and in 2018-2019 we had our best year ever. We finished that year in September 2019 and our accounts several months later. We just made our donation to the Fire Fighters Charity and their reaction was pretty overwhelming, particularly given the health crisis that we are all currently facing.
The Fire Fighters Charity runs several services all designed to improve the lives of active and retired Fire Service Personnel and their families. They provide all kinds of therapy, both for physical and mental health, they also provide food vouchers if firefighters have fallen on hard times.
This means our donation, just for last year, could be covering 2000 exercise therapy sessions, 500 hydrotherapy sessions, 400 physio sessions, 400 psychological support sessions, 100 days of the Services Access Line AND 118 food vouchers.
When we set out to rescue the fire-hoses we had no idea that we would be able to have this impact. Just think, these hoses could have just gone to landfill, and instead they get a beautiful hand-crafted second life and a glorious chance to give back.
In these extremely difficult times, where there are significant uncertainties, the one thing that we can all do is think about acting in the best interests of everyone.
Elvis & Kresse is a business, yes, but we also see ourselves as a citizen. We were established for one key reason, to rescue London’s fire-hoses. In the process of doing that we decided that it wasn’t enough to just solve that problem. We have always donated 50% of our profits to charity. Having just completed the accounts for last year we are proud to announce that for 2018-19 we have donated over £70,000.00. We will tell you a lot more about the impact of these donations, which we can only make with your support, in the coming months.
But rescuing materials and making donations is not enough. We have to run on renewable energy, we have to be a living wage employer, we have to ensure that there is no exploitation or environmental degradation caused by any of our activities.
This month is also B-Corp month. In 2015 we became one of the first businesses in the UK to certify as a B-Corp. Why did we do this? Because B-Corps all understand that we have to act in the best interests of everyone. We all have to sign the B-Corp Declaration of Interdependence:
We are responsible for each other and future generations. For us, right now, that means ensuring that our team stays safe and healthy, it means social distancing and following all of the Government and National Health Service advice, it means seeking out people within the community that need help and doing what we can to help, and it also means we are unfortunately unable to welcome anyone to our otherwise entirely open and transparent workshop, Tonge Mill. Our very popular workshop events may have to go ‘virtual’ for a while but we already have some lovely customers who are willing to give this a go, let us know if this is something you would like to try too. Right now our workshop is running as usual and all of your orders are being fulfilled, we will let you know if this changes.
This is a time for Social Enterprises and B Corps to shine. We are asking ourselves, every day, ‘Is this the best you can do?’. We don’t know what the future may bring but Elvis and I, and indeed everyone at Elvis & Kresse understand that we are dependent upon each other and are responsible for each other. We will act accordingly because we understand what interdependence means and as a proud member of the B-Corp community we gladly signed the Declaration.
- Elvis & Kresse
If you are reading this than you are definitely aware of our mission to Rescue and Transform materials that would otherwise go to landfill. Many of you will also know that our home and workshop, Tonge Mill, was also something of a rescue.
We moved here in 2013 and most of the building had no heat or power. One of the central segments had a simple tin roof that was constantly misting condensed water back into the rooms below. Two of the loos were worse than the one in Trainspotting... yes, worse.
Today's Metro Newspaper has done a 3-page spread on how we brought this historic building back to life and converted part of the Mill into our home. There are lots of tips and tricks in there; if you are renovating on a budget, want to work with reclaimed materials, and are keen to get your hands dirty then look no further!
And for those that didn't get a physical copy, Metro also published the piece online - you can read that here.
We are going to try to disrupt the failed, disengaged, industrial recycling system and donate a technology to the world that will be able to rescue the billions of aluminium cans that are NOT being recycled. And if we succeed we just may be able to help with the renewable heating revolution too.
And now for the long answer…
Problem
Each year in the UK tens of millions of aluminium cans are littered in our public spaces and over 2 billion aluminium cans don’t get recycled because they are put into the wrong bin. Why? There are a lot of contributing reasons: we are not engaged or in love with recycling, we don’t have the right incentives, like a deposit system, and we don’t foster a deep love for the materials we rely on for our home, our environment, this amazing planet that supports all known life. The problem gets worse, and we can't thank Keep Britain Tidy enough for highlighting it... if you include glass and plastic drinks containers too then this litter is responsible for the death of 3 million small mammals each year!
Solution
This is a complicated problem, so the solution we propose is also complex. Equally, given the scale of our environmental crisis, we must always strive for multiple positive objectives:
Getting Involved
This open sourced project officially launches this month, in February 2020, and we would love for you to follow along and contribute. We are specifically looking for individuals who are keen to contribute:
A few months ago we were asked to describe our vision of the business landscape for 2020... It is now hot off the press and in the current issue of WIRED magazine!
If you have no time, the premise is this - businesses have a choice, they have total freedom to be AWESOME, regenerative, and good! But for those models based on exploiting people, planet, or both...? Time is up.
Here it is, in full:
If you want to check out the original WIRED article, you can find the link here.
This is the 2020 Elvis & Kresse are working on. We hope you have a very happy holiday season and we hope you join us.
Photo by Alun Callender
The holiday season is a busy time of the year for Elvis & Kresse and we know that it will get busier every day until the 23rd of December.
We have been working hard, doing our best to squirrel away as many pieces as we can carefully make, but we already know that certain favourites will sell out before December.
2019, The Team at our previous workshop in Tonge Mill before it got too cold
Why?
We only ever made three Fire & Hide Post Bags in Gingersnap!
Each year as our team grows we will be able to rescue more material, but we will never be able to guarantee that everything will always be in stock. Interestingly this also reflects the reality of our finite planet, and creates a natural rhythm for our happy team. When we post 'Rescued, Transformed, Sold Out' next to an item on our site it is a celebration, it is a success; it means material has been saved and donations for our charitable partners are growing. It means that we are solving the problems we decided to tackle back when we started in 2005.
How can we help you?
If you find that the gift you were really hoping to give, or receive, is currently not available we can help in two key ways:
Thank you for keeping us busy. Thank you for helping us give back. Thank you for supporting the rescue of all these incredible materials and giving them an amazing second life.
- Elvis & Kresse
