Cingomma – making fashion items from bicycle parts
Cingomma employs used bicycle tyres to create unique fashion accessories (belts, wallets, bags and key rings).
It focuses on innovative objects such as the Tube wallet, for which the inner tubes of bicycle tyres for the outside cover and disused PVC advertising posters for the inside lining are employed. Another product, the Youtattoo, is a belt hand-made of used bicycle tires "tattooed" with watercolor-printing.
Many products reaching the end of their "lives" can be reinterpreted and enhanced again. The company aims at three kinds of influential impacts: economic, social, and environmental.
- Economically, the savings from material re-use translates into increased income for people working on the project.
- Socially, Cingomma wants to go beyond the classic factory-based business model, with two important objectives: to train craftsmen, and to create a business model that feeds the supply chain in the right way. It has chosen to focus on local artisans, so access to its E-commerce store is limited to avoid conflict with its excellent network of local distributors.
Reducing environmental impact starts from the base: recovering what has already been produced in order not to use new material, and thus reduce waste and emissions. Cingomma has achieved the following successes in reducing environmental impact:
- 20 000 tires recovered per year and transformed into belts and other items
- 4 000 m2 of PVC advertising sheets recovered per year and transformed into bags and wallets
- 2 000 m2 of neoprene waste recovered per year and transformed into bags.