Behind The Scene

There is more to a product than the product itself. To me, what happens behind the scene is as important as what you physically get. Transparency is very important to me. Here are some facts you might want to know.

:: materials

Reduce - reuse - recycle - dump. Today, most of the beverage cartons (especially in Switzerland) are not being recycled - but burnt or dumped. Before material ends up in landfills, dissolves in fire, or is given for recycling, it makes sense to stay valuable a little longer in other products. Things like the Recycled Magic Wallet.

Reuse and shop local. I try to use as few virgin materials as possible but it's not possible to avoid them entirely. So at least I try to source them within Europe.

I am using elastic made in Swirtzerland (retailer is Migros) and Velcro made in Spain. Tetra Pak is made in Europe as well. The staples are "made abroad", I suppose it's China. I'm sorry.

:: energy

Most products (also small ones) use a lot of energy or special tools to produce them. Not so the Recycled Magic Wallets (if it's even comparable with mass produced items). Even recycling is not always the best solution as this process as well uses a lot of energy. Reusing things is most energy efficient but a challenge because most of today's things are designed to function for one specific reason only. Or not...?

Anyway, if working at daylight, making Recycled Magic Wallet uses nothing but human power and the tools shown below. This is almost crazy and products like these are very rare in our world full of technology and electronic machines. Don't get me wrong. I love new technology, I love the internet, I love my iPhone, I love listening to podcasts making the wallets. But I also love using my hands - that's a reason why I make Recycled Magic Wallets entirely by hand. The other reason is: It just works perfectly without using a machine.

:: technique

It needs time and patience to learn how to get good quality work. Believe me, it took a long, long time and a lot of prototypes to figure out the perfect way to make a Recycled Magic Wallet. That technique that takes 225 individual steps to finish a wallet does come up to my quality standards. So now I got it. Finally.

:: dematerializing

Reusing materials in order to reduce waste makes sense. Even if you use a Recycled Magic Wallet only for a certain time or occasion (for example when traveling or clubbing), it's still long enough to steal time from other wallets that too often are made in a questionable way by poor people in need unnecessarily wasting precious material.

True, you might have to carry around less things in your simple and slim Recycled Magic Wallet than you are carrying around now. But reconsider. What do you really need to carry around in your wallet? And don't a lot of people say: "Less is more?" Even more so if the thing that's less is even better.