🌍 The power of the mindset shift ✨
Plus tomato-sauce skincare, date-night cauliflower steak, a pow-packed playlist and more
We’ve only gone and done a trilogy.
Need a recap or you’re joining us just now, for Part Three? We’ll catch you up real quick. In Part One we explored renewal 🌱 – the joy of new-old things you can buy, already made way better by talented types. In Part Two, we celebrated repair 👷 and how to fix belongings you already own and love – often improving them too, as you keep on adding layers to their stories.
This week, then, in our ultimate re-re-re-themed 'sletter (for now), we’re chatting not just about adding layers, but entirely flipping something’s script: rethinking its story altogether and reimagining ✨ its very reason for being.
Why? Because right now we – the royal, global, human, ‘we’ – have a real issue with waste, or what we consider to be ‘waste’, anyway. Like the more than 101 million tonnes of scraps, chemicals, packaging and microplastics that just one of our industries – yes, Fashion – generates globally every year (check out this Atmos piece for the full horrific, blow-by-blow breakdown).
Dead stock, landfill, even our own rich excrement (and this Aeon piece has an extensive exploration of that) – the key to stopping these mountains of planet-fouling trash from continuing to pile up is resetting how we – and that’s that humanity ‘we’ again – perceive it, and its potential.
Or, perhaps more tangibly, in more of us seeking out and supporting those who are already reimagining that waste into wonderful things for the rest of us.
And that’s where BRiMM comes in. To do the hunting for you, excitedly coming back holding little treasures high. Like maybe this design project reworking chewing gum into skateboard wheels. Or this student transforming old books into futuristic sculptures. From skincare and fashion lines to sneakers and kitchen tops, this week we’ve unearthed groundbreaking companies dreaming up from the rubble the sort of things we want to cherish in our future.
That one we’re reimagining together, right now – with you.
Tune in, team up and let's turn the tide.
Team BRiMM
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The Design Museum’s chief curator Justin McGuirk delves right into the mucky truth in this Aeon deep dive on the state of our current ‘Waste Age’. A fitting name for a time when a million plastic bags are used globally every minute (!). “Adapt our sensibilities,” he says, and start embracing “irregularity, imperfection, decay and decomposition”.
Brighton-based beauty bods My Skin Feels repurpose food waste from the likes of tomato ketchup, olive oil and breakfast oats and roll them right into their products. Meanwhile, the similarly planet-positive folk at Pelegrims use English wine grape extracts in all of their premium skincare ranges, and now Stella McCartney and Veuve Clicquot have linked up to make these lush grape-leather bags and shoes, too.
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For the last half decade, Helen Kirkum Studio has been rescuing abandoned odd kicks from landfills and reworking them, using deadstock materials, into unique ‘new’ trainers, yes, but also bags (from laces woven together), quilted mesh and collaged leather. The goal? “To highlight and address the problem of post-consumer sneaker waste from linear production processes,” outlines Helen – showing that 'garbage' can have so much more kick-ass life left in it.
From its factory on the Welsh south coast, Smile Plastics crafts 100 per cent recycled, supersized and very pretty plastic sheets from waste materials, like yoghurt pots and chopping boards. Similarly, Durat creates solid surface materials from plastics: think jars, bottles and packaging. Dozens of different looks, from terrazzo speckles to rare shades, are showcased in its 100-sq-ft Helsinki showroom, housed in a former coffee shop – or you can order sampes in the UK from Surface Matter.
Yes, we said steak – we’re talking the cauliflower kind. This herb-crusted version with beans and tomatoes from Epicurious is fancy enough for a dinner à deux to start or end the weekend right. Doing Veganuary? Swap out the parmesan and mayo for dairy-free versions.
MUSIC FOR CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
January’s a slog but we're almost there. Here’s some pow to pop some pep back into your step this week, courtesy of James.
FROM THE COLLECTIVE
After reading last week's memo re: repair, Sidd shared Restarters, another cool pop-up repair café he’s helped out at // Matt flagged this We Are Looking Sideways podcast episode as very essential listening – intriguing // And Sophie let us know that clothing and homeware brand Toast is celebrating its inclusion in the new London Design Museum show 'Future Observatory: Tomorrow’s Wardrobe' by inviting people to come in for textile repair workshops and clothes-swapping events
WHAT’S BRiMM AGAIN?
We’re building a shop, journal and collective to prove that living within limits isn’t living less – and to put the profit to work for the planet.
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