How Upcycling Works?
We r(e)imagine the way waste products can be repurposed & give them a new life. Here are the material we work with. Know how we Upcycle different materials.
Fabric Upcycling
Pre-consumer
Pre-consumer fabric waste comes to us mainly from the suppliers or manufacturers. Products that have quality defects, products that are not sold off the shelves, unused fabrics from retailers & boutiques make up a major chunk of material we use. This massive amount of fabric, if not upcycled, is usually shredded and that fabric waste is turned into rags or burnt.Post-consumer
Post-consumer fabric waste is what you and I discard post use. Predominantly includes items like old garments, curtains, bedspreads and other things. Some of these could be good as new, whereas others have small defects which make them unusable in their current form.As a part of the fabric recycling process, we ideate and design new products from both materials, produce samples and get feedback from consumers before embarking on large-scale production.Once sourced, the fabric goes through a series of cleaning & sanitizing processes. After a thorough sanitization, the design leads identify what end-use products can the material be used for and then the conversion process begins. For eg: We especially love to work with old cotton & synthetic sarees; our team converts the material into either cotton durries or into bright sturdy ropes, depending upon the characteristics of the incoming material . These ropes eventually get transformed to fabric-rope furniture, colorful trays, beautiful quilts & classy bags.
Denim Upcycling
You may be surprised to find that all brand new pairs of jeans on the retail shelf arenโt always sold. These have a limited shelf life in terms of fashion & trends, and when the โshelf lifeโ is over, they are either discarded or sold to smaller vendors at throwaway prices for reselling. Anything not sold eventually reach the shredder and end up in landfills. Rimagined pulls back tons of this material from the last leg of the discarding journey, right before the denim is shredded and burnt. Our expert team at Kolkata transforms this denim into classy totes, laptop bags, beautiful patchwork furnishings, really cute pet beds for the furry kids. And each piece is beautifully handcrafted by our artisan with a lot of precision and love.
Rubber Upcycling
Over 1 billion tyres are manufactured globally every year and this number has been increasing constantly, which means that an equal number of tyres and inner tubes are being discarded as waste. Tyres are a complex mix of natural rubber, synthetic rubber & many chemical additives, and their recycling is almost impossible, therefore, most of this is dumped into the sea or in landfills causing environmental and health issues.
Rimagined source rubber waste (tyres, tubes) from local aggregators. The material then undergoes a thorough cleaning and scrubbing to become eligible for our upcycling work. After this cleaning process, the rubber waste is segregated based on its appropriateness for specific designs, and upcycled to a wide range of fashion accessories, home decor.
Rimagined source rubber waste (tyres, tubes) from local aggregators. The material then undergoes a thorough cleaning and scrubbing to become eligible for our upcycling work. After this cleaning process, the rubber waste is segregated based on its appropriateness for specific designs, and upcycled to a wide range of fashion accessories, home decor.
Yarn Upcycling
We are sure you have visited handloom centers. Have you noticed the piles of yarn that is dumped in the corners, the trimmed off edges of fabric woven on the loom? this is usually treated as residue waste and is used as rags.
We R(e)imagine cotton yarn into gorgeous sarees and stoles and woollen and jute yarn waste as carpets and other decor products.
The discarded yarn is collected straight from the weavers, sorted as per the thickness, and created into a full yarn using handspun Charkha ! This yarn is then dyed and goes up on the handloom where our expert team of weavers transform the pre-production waste into beautiful sarees, stoles or beautiful carpets/floor rugs.
We have started blending different yarn waste to evolve beautiful textures and patterns into our unique stoles and sarees as a part of our process of creating upcycled products.
Wood Upcycling
It takes years and years for a tree to grow, tall and strong, only to be cut later and made into a household item. Even during the time that a product is made, the wood from trees is not utilized completely or optimally, leading to a lot of wood waste. A lot of pre-consumer wood waste comes to us straight from the manufacturers of furniture or wooden products, especially ones who have an expertise in making bigger pieces of furniture. Like all other waste products, wood is also shredded to either burn, perhaps like firewood or end up at a landfill. We repurpose this solid wood scrap into beautiful, sturdy, and really cool furniture and decor pieces. These pieces are the fruit of a labor-intensive design as well as manufacturing process, typically, each piece is unique.
Glass Upcycling
You may wonder why glass needs upcycling, right? It is one of those materials that can easily be recycled and the recycling process does not harm the environment. This holds true only for plain, uncolored glass. Coloured glass does not get recycled, and it is a material that takes millions of years to decompose in landfills. We at Rimagined repurpose this coloured glass from discarded bottles into quirky decor pieces that can adorn your homes