Salty Bag is an innovative award-winning sustainable business that redefines what most people think of as waste by creating handmade premium bags and accessories from recycled discarded and retired sails, kites and parachutes, giving them new life and value. Under the moto “Sails for bags and bags for life”, Salty Bag provides a Sustainable Pattern, being an upcycling company with a Vegan friendly brand, which does not use animal-leather but only source plant-based leathers. Every Salty Bag is designed to be reused or to end up as something else besides trash.
Sailcloth by its nature is a strong hard-wearing material. Even after reaching its end of life at sea, a sail will retain its strong, long-lasting, weather resistant nature making it perfect for being upcycled into tough, elegant travel bags and accessories that can be enjoyed and cherished for years. This Corfu-based brand saw an opportunity to use reclaimed material in their sturdy, waterproof bags; their bags and luggage are made mainly from old yacht sails. In addition, they use recycled polyester and vegan leather, as well as reclaimed seatbelts and rope. Discarded sails display various states of wear; Salty Bag manages to embrace any stains, creases or other marks on the material, making them part of each bag’s charm and sometimes adding the words “This was once a sail.”
Conceived during a Corfu Sailing Club seminar in January 2013, Salty Bag was founded to design and create ultra-low impact, handcrafted, upcycled, hard wearing, circular-economy bags designed to last a lifetime and to be reused at their end-of-life. Salty Bag combines Upcycling, an unflappable focus on the best and strongest materials, and incorporating reusability into every design it makes.
Each sail that is collected is carefully upcycled to continue its journey as a Salty Bag. All other materials that are used in the construction of the bags, from the lining to the straps and even the thread, are also responsibly chosen from sustainable sources. Adding to the unique nature of each bag, the company tracks down and curates the life-story of each sail they use, including it in a booklet that comes with every bag.
Every Salty Bag is a unique piece. Adding to the unique nature of each bag, the company tracks down and curates the life-story of each sail they use including it in a booklet that comes with each bag. There are differences in texture, color, stitching and aging, depending on how hard and how often each sail was used. Salty Bags may come with stains, abrasions, scrapings, creases, or marks. These form the traces of each Salty Bag’s unique story: “Upcycle your Sail”.
Furthermore, Salty Bag is a live example of a company with social impact. True to its philosophy of corporate social responsibility and inspired by the work and the vision of the environmental organisation World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF Greece), Salty Bag created the collection “Salty Bag x WWF”, while at the same time, it innovates once again by giving them names derived from the Latin name of the winds (Boreas, Eurus, Notos, Zephyrus). In order to support the action WWF Greece, the company offers 10% of the purchase of these products as a financial support to WWF. One other novelty of Salty Bag is that its website is available in Greek and English language, but also in Corfu local dialect!
Source: saltybag.com