These Stylish Bags Are Made from Rejected Airbags

Brendan Menapace

It’s amazing seeing the progress companies have made with making eco-friendly products like apparel and bags out of eco-conscious material. Sometimes it takes developing new compounds, or creating new ways to use organic ingredients. Other times it includes repurposing products into consumer products.

Swiss bag manufacturer Freitag just created a foldable bag from discarded airbags and truck tarpaulins. The bag can be used as a tote bag, shoulder bag or backpack. When not in use, it can be folded up and stored easily.

The airbags were originally intended to be used in trucks, according to Dezeen, but failed safety tests and were rejected before ultimately finding new life as a bag. The storage pocket is made from truck tarps.

That original plan factored into the design process, as the creators knew that the material would be able to pack tightly and expand for use.

“Just like an airbag in a car, the airbag B-material that we used should be able to unfold as a backpack,” the brand said, according to Dezeen.

The bag, titled the F707 Starts, is reportedly the first bag that uses airbag textiles as the primary material.

“We are usually quite familiar with recyclable material from the street – discarded truck tarpaulins, car seat belts and bicycle inner tubes are among our most important material components,” a representative from Freitag told Dezeen. “However, dealing with the airbag textile was not easy at the beginning, as we had hardly any experience with this material.”

Repurposing material to divert it from ending up in a landfill or the ocean is the way of the future. There are countless apparel initiatives that use plastic that would otherwise end up in the ocean. This is a creative way to use a product that many of us don’t think of (or, thankfully, never even see), and turn it into something versatile, stylish and extremely usable.

As people see more ideas like this pop up, consumer habits will continue to shift toward other creative and eco-friendly products like this, meaning they will be what end-users are looking for in promotional products.

Most importantly, this product has a story beyond “it was made in a factory.” If an end-user sees a bag that came from a truck airbag, that’s enough to make them think, “Oh, that’s neat,” and hold onto it for a long time.

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