Fashion & Beauty (accessories)

We picked up on Timbuk2’s move into messenger bags fashioned from recycled plastic bags few months ago. A few details are now dribbling through. The company say they are “working hard to test and get them to market” but as yet they remain in the ‘early development phase.’ What is known is that they’ll be called Timbuk2 Lamitron Bags, possibly as a reference to the process which fuses the low and high density polyethylene. In tech talk that is LDPE and HDPE or plastics 4 and 2 respectively. You probably know them better as shopping bag and milk jug. This top secret fusing machine was created by a design consultancy, RootPhi, who call their resulting fabric ‘Reclaim’. Apparently you end up with fabric that has the good attributes of a leather or vinyl. Cool Hunting got their hands on some of the fabric a while back and were pretty chuffed with the finished look of the semi-fused big and small bubblewrap. They have a pic too. PSFK also have some other images and a short interview with one of the product developers from RootPhi, where he reckons the plastics can be cost effectively recycled to produce a wide variety of textures, thicknesses and colours. At this is you need to know more then the best bet would be to sign up to Timbuk2 to be a product tester. They might even let you try one of their hemp numbers due for release January 2008. ::Timbuk2 Lamitron, via reminder tip from JG.