Because of climate change, Bergen, the rainiest city in Europe, became the rainiest city in World 127 in 2010. The consumption of umbrellas became very high, and the 2015 world’s pandemia made this industry stop among others. A local group of inhabitants decided then to create a local industry of recycled umbrellas, the most used fashion article in this city.
People started organizing workshop to fix umbrellas or create new ones from local fabric waste (old fishnet, old clothes waterproof, sailing fabrics etc.). They created a new local industry, more jobs, less waste, and social media allowed the local concept to spread in the world and to became a normal thing to do.
What if …
recycling and fixing the most useful article in your city was a priority? And what if this article was an umbrella?
Issue:
To have a local impact on the environment, the job market and the need of your local community, we need to find small actions with big impacts. We can focus on the local need in fashion and develop a recycling/fixing service!
Inspiration:
My daily life in Bergen, specially during the Covid crisis. An online paper talking about an umbrella vending machine system in Bergen and some of this similar machine that I saw in Bruxel and London as a teenager.
This World was contributed by Amandine Maillard Bourgeois (located in Bergen, Norway) using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
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