A new collection by outdoor sportswear company KEEN turns airbags into messenger bags, backpacks, tote bags and wallets.

Outdoor sportswear company KEEN has launched a new collection called the Harvest III Series, which is made (in the USA) from pre-consumer automobile airbags. Side impact bags have been collected, over-dyed to give them a rich saturated color and upcycled into seven different styles of totes, bags and wallets.

So how do you go from airbag to messenger bag? First, left over, excess and obsolete airbags are sourced from an airbag manufacturer to a recycler in Salt Lake City and are then sorted and shipped to a factory in Chico, California. The white bags are put aside to make the white colorways and the remaining bags are dyed and laundered at a dye house.

The colored airbags are then sorted and cut into the bag pattern pieces either by hand using a rotary knife or by die-cut machine. All the pieces to make one specific style are gathered together and given to crafters to complete the product.

This process requires a high level of creativity and craftsmanship, and to celebrate this each item is hand-numbered and signed by the crafter who made it.

The Harvest III Series features five bags and two wallet styles, priced from $20 – $120.

The post From Airbags to Messenger Bags – KEEN Introduces a New Collection appeared first on EcoSalon.

According to the Holstee website, “Holstee designs and curates with a conscience.”

Once you go to the site and peruse their collection of interesting as well as fashionable goods from the likes of Alchemy Goods, Garbage of Eden and of course Holstee’s own line of products, you can see that many of their conscious offerings also give back to worthwhile organizations, hence that conscience.

Founded during the recession in 2009, brothers, Mike and Dave left their full-time jobs to pursue their passion for a sustainable lifestyle through innovative design. Over the course of the first year of business the team “designed and produced half a dozen new products including The Recycled Wallet, made of newspapers and plastic bags collected off the streets of India, The People Pendant, made of recycled acrylic scraps from a Chicago-area sign maker and their Upcycled line of t-shirts which highlight the lasting value of apparel.”

The brothers are doing some really great work as you can see on their Ecology page, by using 10 percent of all their sales to fund micro loans, recycling all their packaging in creative ways and by partnering with Carbonfund.org to offset shipping.

This week, the Holstee brothers are offering their grey Holstee Recycled Wallet that came about as a solution to solve their own wallet needs. Each is one-of-a-kind and may include anything from colored ads, cartoons, headline news or classifieds ads.

You like? Well then leave a comment below to win. Of course, if you don’t feel like waiting, you can always go here and buy it outright.

Good luck!

(Legalese: contest rules and FTC compliance.)

The post Holstee Recycled Wallet Giveaway appeared first on EcoSalon.