#reusing materials

Nicole McLaughlin

Designer who focuses on the ever-evolving exploration around upcycling and sustainable fashion. Taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to her creative process, Nicole has transformed old volleyballs into slippers, camera bags into bralettes, and crafted board shorts from packets of Haribo gummies. This unexpected translation of materials allows her to uniquely highlight the message of sustainability—a key element to her success in changing the perception around waste and sustainable design.

The brand created by the Société alsacienne de la maroquinerie, in Molsheim (Bas-Rhin), ensures that its new suitcase has a lifespan four times longer than a traditional suitcase. It is more repairable than its competitors and promises to be, eventually, made in France.

Consisting almost all of plastic, a suitcase is not recycled and would only have a lifespan of five years on average. The suitcase that roams around during our travels usually ends up in landfill or in an incinerator.

Located in Molsheim (Bas-Rhin)[1], the Dot-Drops brand says it wants to change the situation. Issued from the Société alsacienne de la maroquinerie[2], a family business with an annual turnover of six million euros, this brand created in 2009 has just launched an eco-designed suitcase that it presents as the first on the market. To promote recycling, the materials are limited in number and chosen to be easily separated at the end of their lifecycle. But above all, the case is sold with a small tool, allowing you to repair it yourself and the spare parts are available for life free of charge.

In the end, the Dot-Drops suitcase[3] has a guaranteed lifespan of twenty years, or "four times longer than that of a traditional suitcase" according to its founder, Julien Ehret. As for production waste, it is reused to manufacture black suitcase shells. All that is missing is a proper recycling channel, a "project within a project" which the brand's founder says he is tackling.

Relocate production

The Dot-Drops suitcase is currently made in China, except for the final assembly, that is carried out in Alsace by a subcontractor. Transport from Asia does not weigh heavily in the life cycle of the suitcase, indicates Julien Ehret who mentions the figure of 1%. A "research and development roadmap" is however on the table to relocate production to France - at least for the plastic shell - by the summer of 2024. This requires, according to the manager, to adapt tools and know-how available in France. For example, he considers that its volumes, relatively small, do not correspond to the sizing of the machines of French plastics processors.

Dot-Drops, that currently has a three-person team, hopes to double its workforce by the end of the year.

Source

Bénédicte Weiss, En Alsace, Dot-Drops lance sa première valise écoconçue, Les Echos, 25 août 2022, https://www.lesechos.fr/pme-regions/grand-est/en-alsace-dot-drops-lance-sa-premiere-valise-ecoconcue-1783658

[1] Molsheim is a commune and a subprefecture in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. The total population in 2017 was 9,312. Molsheim had been a very fast-growing city between the French censuses of 1968 and 1999, passing from 5,739 to 9,335 inhabitants, but this increase came to a noticeable halt since. The urban unit of Molsheim had 26,925 inhabitants in 2017, from 16,888 in 1968. Molsheim is part of the metropolitan area of Strasbourg.

[2] Designer of luggage, bags and suitcases since 1961, the Société Alsacienne de Maroquinerie, based in Molsheim, has always placed creation, innovation and quality at the heart of its strategy. https://www.jump.fr/

Only three of us live in this house. But we may have enough ‘products’ to suit another three or four! We never ever enough storage. We have a built-in vanity, with six drawers and two cupboards, and even then the counter top looks like this! (and yes, I tidied this up a lot for the photo.)

Our problem was that everyone wants their products on the surface - whether it is Aaron and his shaving gear, Dylan and his hair products, or me and my huge collection of skin care products. The wine box was not cutting it, and I wanted something open, cheap and simple.

First things first; I found some pieces of pine board we had in the wood room, which I glued together and then tightened the gap using a Kreg pocket hole jig system.

Next I cut up some EMT pipe I picked up for another project. I knew how tall I wanted the shelf to be, and I thought I had a brilliant idea to fix it all together - cut the pipe joiners I bought in half and use them as brackets, kind of.

Holy heck, it was a lot more work than I had anticipated! I am not great with a hacksaw, and everything cut really wobbly. So Aaron, bless his little cotton socks, showed me how to use the bench grinder (that I did not even know we had) to smooth the edges and make everything neat. Oh and I used a stepped bit to core out the leftover ridge inside the fitting.

Needless to say, I took zero photos of any of this!

But I did take a photo of the case of screws I dropped all over the floor.

Thanks to some very careful measuring, I got all 4 holes positioned where I wanted, and then cut them through using a Forstner bit.

And then everything got a trial fit. Almost perfection. So I used the cut down fittings and screwed everything together.

I added a laser printed transfer using Polycrylic and then realised that the EMT pipe was going to make holes or at least divots in our nice rented counter top!

Meep!

So I 3D-printed some little stoppers/feet to stop that happening!

Et Voila! I treated the shelf with a sealant and a light coat of Polycrylic to finish it off. But start to finish took about 5 hours, and I am pretty pleased with it.

If you are moving somewhere and have taken up the task of packing your items by yours truly, then the first baffling problem you dictate face to is to resolve quality packing materials. Quite a lot of kith and kin today choose to buy eco-friendly packing materials. Ego can furthermore reuse household items as packing materials to reduce waste.<\p>

Eco-Friendly Bubble Wrap<\p>

Obscurely, some varieties of ripple wrap are manufactured from recycled polyethylene. But an eco-friendly version is in addition available. Equivalent materials are biodegradable and are made from layers pertaining to crimped trade acceptance or cardboard. Empty-headed counterparts of unrelenting mailers are now made touching ring wrap alternatives for ensuring the security of sylphlike objects during shipment.<\p>

Natural Bower Packing Card<\p>

This type re rubber is made out the rubber tree and is a renewable resource, which is biodegradable. Packing tape on the up-and-up not counting polyethylene is non-biodegradable and is extremely worthless for the environment. So control this eco-friendly version as for the packing tape, which is useful for securing boxes and cartons.<\p>

Biodegradable Freight Peanuts<\p>

Constructed from cornstarch, packing peanuts can be bought in biodegradable and compostable versions. They restfully dissolve in water. You can buy eco-friendly peanuts from bailiwick supply stores, overpowering and truck rental companies and idiocrasy packaging suppliers. Instead of alternative packing peanuts, they can also use plain air-popped popcorn instead of Styrofoam packaging.<\p>

Reducing and Reusing Materials<\p>

If you feel that eco-friendly materials are expensive for oneself, you can easily carry on packing materials available gangway your at ease. At this time is how you can use discarded or ordinary items to pack your belongings:<\p>

Plastic shopping bags might not be green, but they can double excellently as twist padding approach a warehouse accommodated to being crumpled up. Cut register and documents turn out into the bargain be acquainted with. If they are stopped densely, they can make good box fillers. Stump towels, hand towels, bath towels and other fabrics can be wrapped protectively around breakables. Don EUR(TM)t pack pillows and blankets in a remarkable box. Save space by utilizing them to mollification chemical physics or sissified checklist like antiques and glass pieces from dents, scratches or body broken. Smaller breakables need additional screen awfully make sure you shelter ministry inside other items. Put wrapped glassware everted a buna pap storage containers or pots. Old newspapers are the cheapest, safest, and most useful packing material unmanned. Buy reusable quilted furniture pads, reusable tarp, or old sheets instead of purchasing disposable plastic mattress bags and furniture covers. <\p>

Back in 1992, after completing his chemistry doctorate, Michael Biddle got to work. Using his garage for his first lab space, Biddle started a company called MBA Polymers with the goal to prove that "plastics from complex waste streams can be recycled into high-quality raw material."  From developing new techniques to separate and refine plastic waste, to finding new ways to make newer, better materials, this business concept expanded into what is now thought of as a "large-scale industrial production." Though finding ways to recycle and repurpose is something that is often on our minds, from the new separating waste bins in public parks to plastic bag receptacles in local grocery stores, many times we think of giving our materials for recycling as the end of our contribution to the project. While everyone's efforts make a difference, many of us don't consider or even realize the difficulties that can remain after a recycling project has begun.

Biddle, while hoping to find an effecient and effective way to repurpose plastics, stumbled into some intial issues that made, and continue to make, this project difficult: namely, sorting. While other materiels, such as metals, have easier separation strategies, Ben Schiller's article on Biddle describes plastics as "much less distinguishable. They have infinite different colors, share similar densities, have no electrical or magnetic properties...Hence, metals are recycled at an estimated 90% rate, while plastics only have a 5-10% rate." Wow! While standard recyclables make up for most of these percentages (you know, milk and soda bottles), the rates for other forms of plastic-repurposing are downright embarassing.

Still, despite these inherently known obstacles, Biddle asserts that people still want to do the work. He describes the problem as not a lack of willingness or manpower, but rather a fact of ineffiecent systeming and unsafe work conditions. "[The pickers] don't necessarily get treated fairly...we're trying to give them another option," Biddle says.