In yesterday's post we looked at holes as inspiration for a theme party. Unfortunately, one of the most famous holes we often find mentioned in the news is the invisible laceration in the ozone layer. The decline in the amount of ozone in the Earth's stratosphere (the ozone layer) and a springtime decrease in the stratospheric ozone around Earth's polar regions is produced by man-made chemicals, such as halocarbon refrigerants, solvents, propellants, and foam-blowing agents (chlorofluorocarbon, HCFCs, freons, halons).
Last year researchers and scientists confirmed that there are signs of an increase of ozone, meaning that the ozone hole may be shrinking, an improvement that may be down to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons in aerosols and fridges. Yet, while we may rejoice at such news, pollution remains a serious issue all over the world, especially in large cities.
The fashion industry is among the biggest polluters out there and sustainable projects by huge high street retailers and fashion conglomerates often end up being temporary occasional efforts that may not change things in the long-term.
Yet there are people out there – young and independent designers – who are actually trying to launch interesting products with an environmental twist about them. One of them is product designer Kelly Maj Gijsen.
Gijsen did a textile course at the Srishti Institute of Art & Design in India while studying at the University of the Arts Utrecht and her journeys in India helped her documenting the textile industry. In India she indeed met local workers in the factories, cobbles in cotton fields, and weaving families in small villages dying their fabrics with natural ingredients such as turmeric, indigo or pomegranate.
Kelly realised there was a huge potential there, but at the same time she firmly kept in mind environmental issues. These two experiences and interests eventually came together when she became aware of Graviky Labs, producers of Air Ink, a black ink made from air pollution. The idea for the ink came to Graviky founder Anirudh Sharma after he spoke to friends about heavy air pollution in India staining their clothes.
The ink for Graviky's pens, oil-based paints, and spray paints is made with a special technology that the lab has dubbed "Kaalink", a process that detoxifies heavy metals and particle carcinogens from carbon soot from car emissions. A single Air Ink pen contains for example 30-40 minutes of car pollution and last year the company gave 150 liters - equivalent to roughly 2,500 hours of diesel car pollution - to a group of Hong Kong artists who created murals with the ink.
Gijsen's work with Indian craftspeople and her experiments with AirInk led her to the creation of a small label, "Made by May and Others", producing a series of hand-woven "Scarves with a Story" (presented last week at the Dutch Design Week Eindhoven) dyed with natural ingredients, but characterised by decorative motifs printed with AirInk. The decorative motifs on each scarf are printed with around 2 hours and a half of diesel vehicle pollution.
These accessories genuinely tell several stories, from the tales of the artisans who made the textiles to the research that went into the ink and the stories of the anonymous people who produced the exhaust gases to actually make the ink. This is a very creative and clever way to use pollution that follows Buckminster Fuller's statement "Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value." If you ever thought that craft and pollution couldn't co-exist in a fashion product, well, you were definitely wrong.
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