This London handbag company has recycled 175 tons of fire hoses into fashion accessories

Elvis & Kresse repurposes fire hoses into hand-crafted, luxury bags and accessories.
Since 2005, they have recycled 175 tons of fire hoses that would have otherwise gone to landfill.
They collect all of London’s discarded hoses from the London Fire Brigade and donate 50% of their profits to the Firefighters Charity.
They also save and recycle 15 other materials, including scrap leather.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Elvis & Kresse is a UK-based sustainable business and Certified B Corporation that turns disused fire hoses into luxury bags and accessories.

The company was founded in 2005 in Brixton, London, by James Henrit (Elvis) and Kresse Wesling, and it is now based in the Kent countryside, inside a rescued 19th-century flour mill.

In 2005, the couple had a chance encounter with the London Fire Brigade, where they discovered that every year between 3 and 4 tons of damaged or old fire hoses were sent to landfill.

The couple set up Elvis & Kresse to save all this waste and promised they would donate 50% of their profits to the Firefighters Charity.

Since then, 175 tons of material has been reclaimed and recycled, and the company started working with 15 other waste materials as well. One of them is leather.

In 2017, Elvis & Kresse started a partnership with the Burberry Foundation with the aim to save the leather waste Burberry produces every year, and recraft those cutoffs into new luxury fashion items.

To learn more about Elvis & Kresse, check out the video above.