Upcycling
Upcycling
“At SERKLES we believe in creative reuse, transforming waste textiles into new products of a higher environmental value, which forms part of a wider movement towards sustainable and ethical thinking”.
The fashion and textile industry generates around 16 million tonnes of textile waste annually in the EU alone, much of which still ends up in landfills or is incinerated. This is a result of production processes that use millions of tonnes of water and kilowatts of energy, not to mention countless hours of labour. Searching for ways to reduce this huge environmental impact, some brands have opted for downcycling by reprocessing used textiles or textile waste for use in both new textile products and non-textile products.
At SERKLES, we believe a design-based circular model, where post-consumer textile waste material is repurposed to create new garments, is the best solution to increase sustainability and reduce the fashion industry’s environmental impact. Our design team have taken on the challenge of redefining what is possible to create with waste material to make stylish, durable and practical products.
To make SERKLES products, locally based home workers are responsible for several processes in a single garment’s manufacture. This manufacturing model relies on craftsmanship in the production of high quality upcycled products, in stark contrast to mass-manufactured products. This also offers opportunities to create a positive social impact at the grass roots level by generating employment that pays a living wage and providing training opportunities within the fashion industry.
Upcycling out socks into dolls
We design with the whole lifecycle of our socks in mind. At the end of its life, we repurpose a sock’s fabric into new ragdolls, giving the organic cotton fibres a new lease of life. In partnership with Stich the Gap, we run community sewing workshops in East Dunbartonshire which teach children and adults the skills necessary to upcycle end-of-life sock fabric into new toys.
Upcycling old tents into Sekles backpacks
Each year, an estimated 250,000 tents are left at music festivals across the UK, of which the majority are taken to landfill. The manufacture of a typical 3.5 kg tent emits the equivalent of as much as 25 kg of carbon dioxide, and contains the equivalent of around 8,750 straws or 250 pint cups of plastic. This is about the same amount of CO2 emitted by a car driving 100 miles – without even taking into account the additional energy it takes to transport new tents to shops and abandoned ones to landfills.
