In 2004, designer Sookyoung Chae attended a performance by an Australian musician who used recycled objects as instruments. Since then, she has never looked back: ‘I realised the sheer amount of waste there was around me and that each object could be a material for something new,’ she says, ‘and I refocused my ideas about design.’ Having graduated with a Master’s in industrial design and worked in a number of agencies, she started working with NGOs and set up a not-for-profit recycled-fashion brand before creating REBLANK, a design company that gives used materials a ‘second birth’ by up-cycling them into new design products.
Drawing no blanks
The ‘blank’ in the name refers to just that, an open possibility to re-do anything, to re-create, re-adapt, re-appropriate or re-invent, to name but a handful of options, along with repair or reform. You could say that Sookyoung’s vision of her company resembles a recycling design equivalent of open source technology, in which old materials can be openly used and developed at will into a new item of value.
Its latest venture is called The Closet Project, an initiative to customise old clothes with which Korean clothing brand Isae has partnered, offering clients of their latest line of vegetable leather jackets a chance to take an old item to REBLANK's Closet Project and have it upcycled into a new bag.
‘Design is key to the company,’ Sookyoung explains. ‘Our products do not have an “ethnic” feel like other recycled goods, they are fashionable items that appeal to design lovers.’
It is this instrinsic aesthetic quality that makes Sookyoung confident that REBLANK will drive recycling values into general use. ‘You can recycle on a personal level, by turning your own coat into a bag, for instance, or on a group level by exchanging clothes and goods, but you also have to expand onto a wider community and organisational level. Recycling can only succeed through collaboration between businesses and social communities.’
To redefine business practice
REBLANK operates through 6 retail outlets and 3 online stores with a staff of 14, and employs people through a Korean programme helping marginalised people to learn to sew. Alongside the obvious environmental impact, it is this social contribution that drives the company, which intends to infuse new patterns in society and business. ‘Mass production clothing companies have a lot of left-over stock,’ says Sookyoung. ‘They often burn it and factor the cost into retail prices! Why not recycle this excess?’
Approximately 4 billion tons of waste are produced in the world each year, of which 1.2 billion tons are municipal waste (from households, shops, schools, etc.). South Korea, where each inhabitant produces 361 kilos of municipal waste per annum, boasts the highest recycling rate of all OECD countries at 49.2%, far above the US at 23.2% or France at just 15%.
With the price of raw materials in general increasing at drastic rates – an astounding 800% on average from 2000 to 2008, before dropping by one third this year – Sookyoung is sure that recycled products will develop a true competitive advantage. To source its materials, REBLANK has partnerships with non-profit collection organisations and is approaching large companies that produce substantial amounts of re-usable material, such as hotels or airlines. Industrial by-products are another avenue. For the time being, textile, paper and leather are the main materials used to make a series of REBLANK bags, wallets and accessories alongside a line of coats, jackets and tops that are only the tip of the iceberg… or rather, the recycling tub!
