The Hungarian designer Laura Zabo founded her accessories brand because of her desire to create unique, striking accessories that both reflect the urban individual as well as do good for the planet we live in.
Laura’s vision is to create functional products out of trash such as old tyre wear. Scrap tyres are a rapidly growing problem on this planet, with over 3 billion tyres dumped globally every year. They take decades to break down and often pile up on landfill sites, taking up valuable space and clogging up our planet. The designer believes in finding imaginative and creative eco-solutions for the increasing amount of waste on our planet and transforming them into useful and sustainable treasures.
“I hope to inspire others to think big and create to live in a better world.” – Laura Zabo
I met Laura at a craft fair and immediately fell in love with her vibrant, statement jewellery which is truly infused with individuality and uniqueness. To find out more about sustainability practices within the LAURA ZABO brand, I talked to the designer to find out how she came to the idea of making fashion accessories out of waste material.
What is your creative background?
My creative background goes all the way back to my childhood. At the age of 8, I began to sell newspapers and at elementary school, I created and sold bead jewellery. In fact, one of my initial ideas for the brand was to go back to this and make clothes out of beads, but that didn’t quite go as I planned.
While painting has always been a hobby of mine, experimenting with colours and textures, I always had an interest in recycling materials and upcycling them into something. My upcycling journey didn’t really begin until five years ago while I was exploring the beautiful country of Tanzania, Africa. Here, I caught sight of some handmade brightly-painted sandals at a Maaai market, that were made entirely out of repurposed car tires. I immediately fell in love with the idea that functional products could be created out of trash, and I knew that was what I needed to do.
How long were you travelling for?
I was in Tanzania for three months as I was invited there by a friend to help run a campsite on the countryside and push some change in the country. It was a great adventure and means to reset my life. Five weeks into my trip, I first spotted the upcycled sandals at the Maasai market and that’s when the business idea fell into place. After coming back to Europe, I spent 2013 in-between places in the UK, Italy and France, working within marketing and starting to get an idea of how my upcycled tyres business could work out.
When did you start your business?
I started looking for what materials to use, where to find them and what the brand would look like in 2015. I felt passionate about it, so I wanted to get it started as soon as possible, in fact, I laid the foundations for the brand in Hungary, such as how to cut tubes, how to clean them and how to make them become something beautiful. I then started selling my first pieces at craft markets in Budapest and it was a real success, which is when the brand became official!
What was your most successful design?
The most successful designs are definitely both the curly wurly earrings and necklaces. I think the appeal of these products comes from the fact that they’re cut and made with very unusual shapes. As the tubes of scrap tyres are naturally curly and come in various different sizes, every product becomes a signature piece. As each tyre is totally unique, no two products are identical, which makes for a truly one-of-a-kind accessory like no other, with its own individual history.
Typically, I would use all shapes, sizes, thicknesses and quality of tyre tubes, but I tend to upcycle the inner tubes for straight pieces as they’re softer and easier to malleate, while city bike tubes are usually upcycled into curlier items, because of their thickness.
Where do you source your materials?
I carefully hand-pick my tyres and cuts, usually from local bike shops, I clean and transform them into high-quality, beautiful products that appeal to a huge range of tastes, from punk rock to bohemian chic.
What would you consider your accolades to be?
First of all, since starting this business, I started feeling very connected to the material which is really the biggest success: thanks to this connection, I am able to continuously bring in new ideas to my audience. One of the biggest accolades so far must be the three-page feature in the Hungarian Forbes only after two months after starting the business. I remember feeling so grateful for it, it was overwhelming and I still am. It was also a great pleasure being noticed as a designer in the Evening Standard.
What does the future look like for Laura Zabo?
So far, I’m planning to organise some workshops and 1:1s to teach tyre upcycling techniques and am really hoping this can become as popular as soap or candle making; it can become a practice as popular as soap-making online courses.
I truly believe there’s no better way to fight fast fashion than make something beautiful with recycled items.
Personally, I loved learning a new skill and as we know, being creative helps with mental health as well as being a way to generate extra income. So with my workshops, I’m hoping that upcycling will help even just one person stabilise their life and up their self-esteem too.
“I WANT TO CREATE A BUSINESS WHERE I CAN HELP THOUSANDS AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO HAVE A JOYFUL LIFE WITH UPCYCLING – TO SHARE MY TECHNIQUES TO BRING THEM JOY AND HAPPINESS”.
LAURA ZABO
I love what Laura Zabo is doing with her brand. She has elevated recycled and upcycled fashion and I hope her work inspires people to invest in sustainable fashion and accessories. You can shop all her accessories on her website here and follow her social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay up to date with the brand’s news and workshop release dates!
THE IMPACT OF TYRES ON THE ENVIRONMENT
TYRE MANUFACTURING
In the 20th century, when technology improved and cars became less expensive, the demand for rubber tyres outpaced the supply. At the time, tyre rubber came primarily from rubber trees—the cultivation of which, according to National Geographic, has contributed to mass deforestation across the globe. The first commercial synthetic rubber was invented in 1909 by German chemist Fritz Hofmann who worked for the chemical company Bayer, and within a year it had begun to replace natural rubber in tyres. By 1931, the chemical company DuPont industrialized synthetic rubber manufacturing and it became globally used in the production of tyres.
The modern car tyres we see today are made of approximately 19% natural rubber and 24% synthetic rubber, a plastic polymer, which requires the use of about 7 gallons of oil to manufacture. The rest is made up of metal and other compounds. The production of tyres still has a colossal impact on the environment, ranging from continued deforestation, the use of climate-harming fossil fuels for the manufacturing of synthetic rubbers to the assembly process.
TYRES AND LANDFILL
In the UK more than 486,000 tonnes of used tyres, around 55 million, are generated annually. Tyres do not decompose, and when they are disposed of in landfills or junkyards, they can release chemicals into the air, ground, and water that alter the ecosystem. Tyres are actually among the most common plastic polluters on earth according to National Geographic, because as the rubber wears down, tyres throw off tiny plastic polymers, known as microplastics, that often end up as pollutants in oceans and waterways.
Related – REFILL NOT LANDFILL – The Growing Global Landfill Crisis – SUZSTAINABLE
TYRES AND THE PROBLEM WITH MICROPLASTICS
Tyre particles can be transported directly to the ocean through the atmosphere or carried by rainwater into rivers and sewers, where they can pass through the water treatment process. Once in the water, microplastics can have a damaging effect on the environment due to their composition and ability to adsorb toxins, and ultimately, they affect the health and well-being of all life forms, humans, birds, animals, and wildlife, through ingestion, entanglement, and habitat disruption. Plankton, the smallest ocean creatures, eat microplastics, absorbing their toxins and displacing the nutritive algae that creatures up the food chain require. They are also mistaken for food by fish and other marine life, so they fill their stomachs with waste that cannot be processed as food. These tiny plastics persist in the environment as they are almost impossible to remove.
A 2017 study by Pieter Jan Kole at The Open University of The Netherlands, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, estimated that microplastic sfrom tyres accounts for as much as 10% of the overall microplastic waste in the world’s oceans. Another 2017 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature put that number at 28%!
“TYRE WEAR AND TEAR IS A STEALTHY SOURCE OF MICROPLASTICS IN THE ENVIRONMENT, BUT AWARENESS IS LOW AND CURRENTLY THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE FOR TYRES”.
PIETER KOLE
The study is one of the first worldwide to identify tyre particles as a major and additional source of microplastics. Scientists have previously discovered microplastics, originating from microbeads in cosmetics and the degradation of larger items such as carrier bags and plastic bottles, in marine environments globally – from the deep seas to the Arctic, which led to the government’s ban on rinse-off microbeads.
Related – SKIN DEEP: THE PROBLEM WITH PLASTICS AND NANO PARTICLES – SUZSTAINABLE
THE GOOD NEWS
The 2006 EU Landfill Directive caused a tyre recycling boom, and today, around 87% of used tyres are diverted from landfill sites in Europe: 34% are recycled, 32% are incinerated for energy production and the remainder are sent for retreading. Whole tyres were banned from landfill sites in the UK under the Landfill Regulations 2002, , followed by end-of-life or shredded tyres in 2006 in accordance with the 2006 EU Landfill Directive.
Tyre recycling has three major environmental benefits:
- It reduces the amount of new material needed to manufacture new tyres or other rubber products.
- It reduces the amount of energy needed to produce new tyres, which in turn reduces the production of greenhouse gases.
- It reduces air, land and water pollution caused by tyres dumped in landfills or the natural landscape.
- Responsible tyre recycling reduces the risk of discarded, highly combustible tyres catching fire in storage and releasing toxic chemicals.
- Tyres can be upcycled into a wide range of items such as jewellery, furniture and bicycle stands.
