This London-based sustainability start-up is building urban backpacks out of ocean waste… and bananas

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/labincbackpack/labinc-backpack

Call it irony or simply a funny coincidence, but the lab.inc backpacks (which are designed to hold your stuff) are made from the stuff you throw away! The bag explores an entirely sustainable approach to fashion with fabric that’s made from recycled ocean plastic as well as vegan leather made from banana plants. It simultaneously reduces planetary clutter thanks to its sustainable materials, while organizing the clutter in your life by giving you a dapper backpack to carry stuff in!

Designer: Min Kim

Click Here to Buy Now: $169 $279 ($100 off). Hurry, only 89/100 left!

Upcycling ocean-bound plastic.

lab.inc’s backpack combines an approach to designing a backpack for an urban city-dweller, along with a focus on ensuring it’s not ‘just another bag’ made with more virgin materials. To execute their vision, lab.inc partnered with #tide Ocean SA, an Award-winning Swiss upcycling company that turns ocean-bound plastic trash into reusable raw materials. The result is a backpack that’s made almost entirely out of recycled plastic, from its waterproof outer fabric, to even the straps and robust plastic clasps.

On purely an aesthetic front, the lab.inc backpack is every bit an urban classic. Its design is simple yet sophisticated, and tries to blend in while standing out. The bag boasts of an all-black exterior that’s punctuated by a strap that vertically cuts through its volume. Designed to help the bag and the wearer stand out, the strap comes with a replaceable design that can be swapped out based on your mood or need. You can choose a bright vibrant-colored vegan leather strap to provide visual contrast against the black backpack or a reflective strap that’s perfect for biking or trekking in the dark. lab.inc also offers a third strap variant made from Bananatex® – a durable, waterproof, sustainable fabric made entirely from the banana plant.

The backpack stores up to 21L, giving you enough space to carry your work + life with you on your daily commute. It comes with padded interiors and designated areas for your laptop, tech accessories, stationery, EDC, and anything you might need to carry around during your daily travel to work, the gym, the supermarket, a friend’s place, and back home. Even the clasps, buttons, buckles, and zippers are sustainably designed out of recyclable materials that can be repurposed using the same techniques used by #tide to turn ocean waste back into raw materials.

Ultimately, the broad appeal of the lab.inc backpack lies in its modern design and use of modern, high-performance, sustainable materials. The fabric developed by #tide is rugged enough to take on the fast-paced hustle-bustle city life, while being waterproof so your bag can withstand rainy outdoors, and also having a reduced carbon impact because of all the recycled plastic. The interchangeable overlying strap (which forms the lab.inc backpack’s most visually defining feature) gives you the unique ability to customize your bag based on your mood and need… and the folks at lab.inc are building out an ecosystem of different strap designs that offer even more functionality – from straps that let you hang sports equipment like your basketball or skateboard, and even solar-panel straps that let you harness solar energy to charge your gadgets inside the bag!

Click Here to Buy Now: $169 $279 ($100 off). Hurry, only 89/100 left!