Elvis & Kresse aspires to build sustainable fashion accessories from recycled aluminium cans

Multi-award winning fashion accessories brand Elvis & Kresse is reportedly working with a group of researchers from Queen Mary University of London’s School of Engineering and Materials Science on a project to recycle aluminium drink cans into zips and buckles, in a bid to drive forward sustainable innovation within the fashion industry. 

Elvis and Kresse, which is known to transform reclaimed material into luxury lifestyle accessories, looks forward to recycle some of the millions of aluminium cans, hoping to provide a green solution for aluminium can recycling that otherwise litters the United Kingdom each year.

This project has been funded as part of a £1.2 million (US$1.5m) award from the Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology (BFTT) programme. It will involve designing and building a renewably-powered forge to recycle cans into hardware.

With this project, the fashion brand hopes to inspire other businesses and communities, big or small, to embrace carbon free manufacturing and build own machines for recycling, heating, or any other processes that use concentrated temperature. 

Dr Haixue Yan, Senior Lecturer in Materials and Principal Investigator for the project from Queen Mary, said: “This collaboration will help protect the environment by converting waste we find on our streets into functional materials that can be used in Elvis & Kresse’s products. With our expert knowledge in materials science and engineering we hope to design a simple, cheap renewable solution for Elvis & Kresse and other manufacturers worldwide.”

Kresse Wesling, Founder of Elvis & Kresse, said “This has been a dream of ours for years, it is overwhelming to have been matched with the geniuses at Queen Mary and finally bring this all to life. This is a revolutionary technology where the IP will be shared with the world. Given the short time frames we have to address the climate emergency we hope that this kind of carbon free open innovation will unlock and inspire all kinds of solutions and generosity.”