There is an old saying that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Seattle-based Alchemy Goods essentially operates on that principal, and it creates new products from what many of us would likely just toss in the garbage.
This includes inner tubes, and to date the company has reclaimed more than 182,000 tubes from across the country and used these to make durable products including messenger bags and belts. Alchemy Goods has also partnered with REI bike shops and Trek retailers to obtain the tubes – ensuring that bike shops that do accept tubes actually have somewhere to send them.
On each product that Alchemy Goods produces it stitches a tiny number in the upper right hand corner, and while small it has a big significance – as it represents the percent by weight of upcycled material that goes into each product. The company strives to make this numbers as high as possible by incorporating as much upcycled material as they can.
Materials received by Alchemy Goods are sorted, cut, cleaned and prepped in the company’s Seattle workshop and bags are assembled at a sewing shop in the neighborhood. And while the tubes may not originally be from America, all of the upcycling efforts are certainly American to the core.
So far the efforts are paying off. The company notes on its website:
While medieval alchemists sought to turn lead into gold, we strive to turn useless stuff like blown-out inner tubes, old seatbelts and advertising banners into useful stuff like bags and wallets. Another word for this is upcycling. Recycling turns stuff into the same thing over and over again. Upcycling turns something of lesser value into something of greater value.
In a way this is exactly what many have looked to do for century, turn the useless into money, and this Seattle operator is certainly on the right track.