Recyclable kitchenware made from recycling too

A NEW business has been launched in Henley selling homeware manufactured in the UK from fully recycled plastic.

ReBorn makes washing up bowls, drainage boards, coat hangers, utensil holders and kitchen roll holders which are “circular by design”, meaning that they are made from recycled materials and can themselves be fully recycled at the end of their lifespan.

In addition, because all the company’s products are made from waste in the UK, they have a much lower carbon footprint than imported products.

A lifecycle assessment carried out by Brunel University calculated that ReBorn’s products are made with 79 per cent less carbon than equivalent products made from virgin materials in Asia.

Since the company launched in September, it estimates that it has saved 5,000 kilos of waste from ending up in landfill and 85,000 kilos of carbon emissions.

Brian Walmsley founder and chief executive of the company, came up with the idea for ReBorn after noticing a gap in the market for sustainably sourced and circular products while working for homeware companies Joseph Joseph and EKO.

An estimated 70 million homeware items end up in landfill every year.

Mr Walmsley, 50, says this is partly because plastic and metal items are usually “co-moulded” together, meaning they cannot be split apart and recycled.

He explains: “You’ve got a triple whammy of it being imported from the other side of the world, made from virgin materials, effectively from petrochemicals, and then it’s not recycled.

“We only recycle about nine per cent of the plastic that we make in the West.”

Thanks to his experience in the industry, was able to speak to John Lewis 18 months ago about creating recycled homeware products with separate metal and plastic components manufactured in the UK.

“Because I was already selling into John Lewis from my previous brands I talked to them about what I perceived as a gap in the market,” says Mr Walmsley.

“You know, you walk into a Waitrose or most supermarkets now and there’s quite a lot of provenance to products, so you say, ‘This meat came from over here or these vegetables came from over there’, but that doesn’t really exist in homeware.”

Having secured the interest of the retailer, Mr Walmsley went on an accelerator programme run by
Virgin, through which he met the Branson family and successfully persuaded them to invest in his idea.

Their support attracted a venture capital investment and an angel investor and by January last year the firm had the money it needed to start buying tools.

Mr Walmsley says that one of the greatest challenges he faced was the prohibitively high set-up costs, with the mould for the washing up bowls, made of a dense steel, costing £30,000.

The company partnered with Biffa, which provides the waste plastic made from polypropylene film, which is often used to wrap fruit and vegetables.

The plastic is heated and pressurised and converted into pellets before being shipped to a factory in Wiltshire.

The metal in the drying racks, which is separate to the plastic tray, is made from Yorkshire steel and is the only component which is not 100 per cent recycled.

Mr Walmsley says the design is “very circular”.

“We’ve even got a little machine in Wiltshire where if anything broken comes back, we can shred it.

“For example, with the very first ones on the line the plastic often isn’t the right temperature.

“Rather than being chucked away, we regrind it again and turn it back into new product so it goes back around the circle. If we get a return — maybe somebody breaks something — then we can turn it into new product.”

The company went through tests with consumers to refine its products and packaging.

At first, it melted down bottles and yoghurt pots to create marbled effects.

Mr Walmsley says: “The strange thing was people looked at it and said, ‘That’s really nice, really beautiful, and interesting’ but when we asked would they buy it, they said ‘No’.

“There was a real disconnect between what people said they liked and actually what they buy for their kitchen. I think it’s because kitchens are increasingly kind of quite designy, if you like.

“A lot of people have an open-plan kitchen or even if they don’t it’s still a kind of social area.

“So we tested loads of different colours but ended up with stone and grey because that’s what they wanted.”

Mr Walmsley runs the company from his home office in Walton Avenue with the support of his wife Jo, 48, who works in human resources for Sanderson Design Group, and sons, James, 16, and Issac, 14.

He says: “It’s quite interesting for kids to see what you do. Obviously sustainability is quite cool and on the minds of kids more than my generation or the older generation.

“It’s nice to be involved in something about sustainability and I think starting a business is quite interesting for kids who see you are actually not just a cog in a machine.

“Issac talks about doing business at GCSE and James talks about doing economics.” His sons still “take the mickey” out of him for being on Facebook, which they see as for older people, and have persuaded him to post videos of himself and the production process on TikTok to appeal to younger audiences.

“The reaction has been very positive,” says Mr Walmsley. “There’s probably people interested in the founder’s story and the fact that it’s all local.

“We show photos of our factory in Wiltshire and all that kind of stuff. Whereas if you were to buy it from Brabantia, it’s probably outsourced to obscure parts of China and they themselves might outsource their components to other factories.

“It’s quite a disconnected supply chain and quite opaque. Even if you work for a brand, how would you really know all of those things?

“You might never have been to China and you might not know the people. But I know Rob, who runs the factory in Melksham, and I know Hannah and Amy at Biffa.”

So far, the company has sold about 50,000 items through John Lewis, which has exclusively stocked the brand until now.

Mr Walmsley describes the feedback from customers as “fantastic” and says he is busy signing up new retailers and designing new products.

He says: “It’s all about spreading the word… we’d love for people in Henley to be proud of this new local business that’s trying to do some good in the world.

“If it resonates, please share the love on social media, especially Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, and on your next visit to John Lewis.”