🌍 The big reinvention of newness⚡

Plus ‘drug eggs’, 112 hip-hoppy tracks and tiles made from tube dust

May 11, 2025

As the sneaky-peek video above shows, we’ve been busy beavering away with photo and video shoots, signing launch brands and partners, perfecting designs and slickening up our site. We can’t wait to open up our founder member waiting list so you can grab a front-row seat: not long now – because delayed gratification* really is a thing! (Someone even makes a magazine about it – shout out to them). Until then, we’re bringing you our regular mix of links we love + musings on lower-impact living.

This week’s theme is… the reinvention of newness⚡

We’ve been spending time with regenerative business leader Giles Hutchins this week (see more on him below), who led us all into his Sussex wood to demonstrate that nothing new happens without old. That spring could not happen without winter, that for rebirth, you need to start with death. “Living-systems thrive on this edge of chaos-order,” he teaches.

Because while ‘new’ is fresh and exciting, our addiction to newness means we are now consuming earth’s resources 1.7 times faster than the planet can regenerate them. We know we can’t chase all things shiny forever more – as much as mindless capitalism might push us to – without those things being equally made up of the old. Just as nature constantly rebuilds itself, we need to do the same and lean into the world of regeneration.

Repairing. Restoring. Recycling. Making ‘like new’.

There are green shoots, if you look for them. This summer’s Future Fabrics Expo, a hub for fashion and textile innovation that has been championing biomaterials and next-gen solutions for more than a decade, will focus on Circ and Circulose, two materials that offer neat textile-to-textile recycling systems. Circ is pioneering a game-changing new way to recycle polycotton blends, while Circulose offers recycled cotton solutions. Just the circular answer fashion needs with its mountains of landfill. With everyone from Ganni and Calvin Klein to H&M and Zara behind it, the big hope is that the industry will finally start solving its waste problem.

Then, at the other end of the scale, a buzz-generating new campaign went viral this week, after Sheffield-based designer, maker and activist Wendy Ward penned a template #TakeItBack letter urging consumers to return their unusable, unmendable clothes to the shops that sold them. Anyone can download and ‘post in protest,’ and thousands have. Go Wendy.

But we can’t sign off this week without a nod to the OG of planet conservation, 99-year-old (happy birthday, man) David Attenborough, whose new film Ocean with David Attenborough was released on Thursday, offering a beautiful window into our oldest and most precious life source. It highlights the also age-old issue of destructive, and ultimately self-destructive, human forces upon it – with the legendary biologist sharing a poignant statement: “the ocean can recover to a glory beyond anything anyone alive has ever seen”. The positive message of regeneration we all need.

So where does BRiMM fit into all this “chaos-order”? This “newness in oldness”? Why introduce something new, now? Because a smoother, more appealing route to the right materials, used in the right ways, is so desperately needed. Just as this week’s pick of other brand new or upcoming innovative and planet-first startups are, too.

Team up, tune in and let’s turn the tide,

Team BRiMM x

p.s. What’s your favourite walking route? Along an adventurous coastline, up a hill finishing with a knock-out view, or a short-cut of secret alleyways through a city centre? Do share and we’ll give you back an inspiring list with everyone’s tips.

p.p.s. do you like this email? Why not forward it to a friend?

The BRiMM Life Questionnaire
This week it’s the turn of BRiMM member Matt Hardisty. Matt spent 25 years as a strategic leader at some of the world's top creative agencies and now runs the earth positive strategy studio Peace Cabin. He is the architect behind the brand and marketing strategy for BRiMM

Latest low-impact life reset that’s brought you joy
“I went deep with the Carbon Literacy Project last Autumn, discovering 2% of my modest pension was supporting fossil fuel extraction – addressing that with an ethical SIPP. Make My Money Matter was a great source for all of that. And I’m finding joy in refills for personal and household cleaning. I know, but the plastic was nuts. It’s about all of us (FKA Haeckel's) do great postal pouches, and Good Clean Stuff’s refillable one spray (yes, it truly fits every use-case) is an easy and convenient joy.”

Indie record store tip
“Years ago there was a record club out of San Francisco called Betalounge. Then came Aquarium Drunkard out of LA. Nothing since has touched either of their curation in physical form until Dreamhouse Records in Leyton. Spanning all the genres, their weekly mailer of curated releases helps me to soundtrack the cabin.”

Causes you give to every month
“The sea is my neighbour, so naturally the RNLI. Plus 10% of my revenue (all the profit from Peace Cabin) goes to marine conservation and carbon sequestration in Margate, UK and its surrounding coastline via Project Seagrass.”
Watch out for the rest of Matt’s answers on our site, launching soon
Fancy doing our BRiMM Life Questionnaire yourself? Get in touch

FROM THE COLLECTIVE

Kate flagged this Radio 4 Curious Cases episode on making sustainable materials from mushrooms that aired last weekend 🍄

Sam’s excited about the opening of Aesop’s first planet-positive concept store in the City this week

Dan’s digging these gorgeous tiles made from actual dust from the London Underground

We love to hear what our collective is finding. Share your links with Becky

Giles Hutchins addressing a crowd on his woodland

SURVIVAL OF THE ADAPTORS

Giles Hutchins has a bit of an aura. You can almost feel it through the screen from the very beginning of this video, as it captures him introducing a group of leaders (including the CEO of Vivobarefoot, more on them in a mo) into his 50-acre woods for a spot of forest bathing and nature-led reflection on the future of business. No wonder, given he’s a “pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness”, among other things. The philosophy at the heart of his books, including Regenerative Leadership, written with thought-leader Laura Storm, however, is really quite simple: in this “Age of Regenerative Business, we [should] see the organisation-as-living-system that thrives amid uncertainty by adapting to change.” Newness, then, is a part of oldness; spring only exists thanks to winter; life thanks to death – and we need to embrace all of it, both in life and in business, to really grow.

→ READ MORE

THREE’S A STYLISH CROWD
How about not one but three fresh fashion startups to get giddy about? Firstly AKYN, the new “purpose-driven brand crafting elevated contemporary womenswear”. Born from powerhouse fashion designer and activist Amy Powney, former creative director of Mother of Pearl, a collection is set for Spring 2025. Then there’s Indilisi, a line and even movement aiming to better connect the wearers of clothes with their artisan makers, founded by planet-positive fashion entrepreneur Safia Minney along with friends including Brett Staniland (of the excellent Stack ‘Fashion’s Not For Everyone with TwinBrett’) plus Fair Trade groups in Bangladesh, India and Kenya. Last but certainly not least, long-running (‘scuse pun) minimalist footwear brand Vivobarefoot kicked off (sorry) ReVivo last November, its initiative inviting customers to send back old sneakers of any brand to be restored. Prior to that the programme had extended to Vivobarefoot trainers only, which had already led to 20% growth for the company. Another case of reimagination leading to something not just newer, but harder, better, faster, stronger.

→ SEE MORE

ROLL WITH IT
Rollr, the brand new, refillable "deodorant designed for pleasure and planet” officially launched to market in March, following no less than “four years of development, over 40 formulations, three chemists, more than 70 testers, hundreds of ingredients, around 70 3D printed parts and two patents pending”. But the long wait for this inspired product and bathroom cabinet objet has been worth it: what founder Milo Pinkney has created is not only beautiful to look at – a glass bottle with a gemstone roller – but it works brilliantly, thanks to its unique prebiotic blend. “Rollr's success will prove a massive point,” says Milo, “that pleasure can drive sustainability”. What’s more, he’s an excellent playlist maker (see below).

→ FIND OUT MORE

The cover image from Tractor Beam's first issue

THE TRACTOR FACTOR
What do you get when you mix blisteringly cool design, immensely creative sci-fi writing – plus a whole load of essential farm machinery? Answer: soilpunk, and its hot new quarterly fiction magazine,Tractor Beam, dedicated to those with a love of soil. Issue 1 dropped last week, with the theme of ‘Generation’. “It’s a nod to renewal, possibility, and new beginnings,” they explain. “It’s about the seeds of new ideas and the literal seeds from which our food, habitats, and livelihoods grow.”

→ CHECK OUT MORE

DRUG EGGS!
Don’t worry, they don’t make you high. But they are delicious. Thanks to Esther, the writer behind The Spike Substack, who stumbled across the recipe after going down a Kimchi stew rabbit hole. Brimm can confirm they’re really tangy and really good. Addictively good, in fact. Hence the name. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

→ MAKE THIS

MUSIC FOR CHAZZ MICHAEL MICHAELS

Milo describes his playlist as “chilled, jazzy, and a bit hip hoppy. Named after the man who is figure skating. Boom.” Just a cool 112 tracks. Go listen your ears off.

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