New design graduate Ewan Morrell created the Bot lifejacket and it's a solution for not just saving lives but also repurposing plastic waste. In response to rising sea levels and the fact that more than 19,000 children drown annually in Bangladesh (that's an average of 53 a day and those numbers are higher during flooding season) Morrell created a project for his final final-year project at Northumbria University.
To address this problem, the lifejacket was created with the intention of involving fast fashion companies that manufacture in the region; they would make and distribute the Bot lifejackets on a charitable basis using fabric waste.
The ingenious design uses plastic bottles, an abundant material, for buoyancy, and they only needed to be inserted into the device to support floatation.
Plastic Bottle Lifejackets
The Bot Lifejacket Uses Plastic Bottles for Buoyancy
Trend Themes
1. Sustainable Life-saving Gear - Creating life-saving gear from repurposed and eco-friendly materials to tackle water-related accidents and disasters.
2. Upcycling Innovation - Developing innovative designs that repurpose commonly discarded materials into valuable products with a social cause.
3. Fast Fashion Philanthropy - Collaborating with fast fashion companies to use their fabric waste for creating lifejackets and other protective gear for people in need.
Industry Implications
1. Sustainable Manufacturing - Manufacturing life-saving gear in a sustainable manner by using eco-friendly materials and minimizing waste and emissions.
2. Social Entrepreneurship - Leveraging social entrepreneurship to address social and environmental problems like water-related accidents and plastic waste in an innovative and impactful way.
3. Charitable Apparel - Creating charitable apparel and gear in collaboration with fast fashion and other companies to support humanitarian causes and address socio-economic disparities.