Ever innovating and trying to the way forward for our planet, FREITAG’s newest round growth is the Mono[PA6] Backpack. Identified for his or her reuse of truck tarps, each a part of this bag – from cloth to zippers to buckles – is made utilizing just one materials: polyamide 6. Referred to as a “mono-material,” the versatile plastic permits the bag to be simply recycled in a single piece with out the necessity for dismantling. When all accessible life-extending choices, corresponding to restore and reuse applications that FREITAG already has in place, have been exhausted and the Mono[PA6] has reached the top of its life, it returns by way of the model’s take-back service to the open-loop materials cycle and might be mechanically recycled into reusable uncooked polyamide 6.
Nevertheless, making a backpack out of only one materials is extra sophisticated than it’d sound. Round Technologist Anna Blattert shares, “We weren’t interested by making easy service luggage a lot as useful, sturdy, and, above all, water-repellent FREITAG merchandise manufactured from only one materials. We didn’t anticipate {that a} discount within the variety of supplies would improve the complexity of the venture – particularly as regards sourcing – so drastically.” A complete of 17 parts manufactured from PA6 needed to be sourced, all with particular necessities concerning texture and properties, from a water-repellent major materials to zippers and options for carrying straps, labels, and thread.
Picture: Elias Boetticher
The seek for a water-repellent cloth constituted of a single materials yielded zero outcomes, so FREITAG took the matter into their very own arms. The model joined forces with an revolutionary Taiwanese companion within the textile trade, working collectively to supply a triple-layered laminated materials whose lining, waterproof membrane, and outer cloth are all manufactured from PA6.
Picture: Elias Boetticher
FREITAG additionally took a collaborative method to the Mono[PA6]’s design, working with Jeffrey Siu, a younger British designer who references biking tradition and reinterprets it for city logistics. “Polyamide 6 can assume very completely different kinds; it may be strong or mushy and used as a mesh or waterproof textile. Combining the variety of a single materials in a backpack whereas persevering with to maintain the core of the FREITAG ethos with merchandise appropriate for biking was extremely thrilling and difficult,” he shares.
Picture: Elias Boetticher
The Mono[PA6]’s musette – a small, removable bag that pays tribute to a biking accent – is the centerpiece that enables one bike-compatible bag to be remodeled into two. Put on it as a crossbody bag or use it as a further outer pocket that may be hooked up to one among a number of factors on the backpack.
Picture: Elias Boetticher
“What I like greatest about our Mono[PA6] Backpack is the musette… It may be worn or hooked up in many alternative methods and acts because the centerpiece of the design as a result of it provides a excessive [level of] versatility and performance,” says Tu Van Giang, Holistic Designer at FREITAG. “As well as, I don’t want to fret about unpacking and repacking my valuables, as a result of relying on my plans, I can connect the musette to the backpack after which, possibly within the night, shortly detach and simply go together with this one. Personally, my favourite technique to put on the musette is to connect it to the entrance of the physique for an unconventional look and in addition to have the vital stuff proper at hand.”
Picture: Elias Boetticher
By launching the revolutionary Mono[PA6] Backpack, the Zurich-based bag producer is closing a fabric loop and getting nearer to its imaginative and prescient of a really round economic system. True, some minuscule parts, such because the spots of adhesive for the lamination and the printing ink for the interior label, will not be manufactured from PA6. And glass fibers are added to the zipper slide for reinforcement. Nevertheless, the quantities used of those supplies are so low that they’ll be recycled together with the luggage mechanically.
The primary 1,500 items of the Mono[PA6] Backpack are manufactured from virgin PA6, a non-recycled materials. The purpose is for the household to be manufactured from recycled PA6 afterward. The aim is then for FREITAG Mono[PA6] merchandise to have a protracted life and, each time potential, discover their method again to FREITAG and into the cycle once more.
After returning to Zurich by way of the FREITAG take-back service, they may journey to the Institute for Supplies Know-how and Plastics Processing (IWK) close by. There, the luggage are shredded and processed into reusable PA6 granulate. The overarching precept is one among shared accountability, the place prospects use their merchandise for a very long time, take excellent care of them, and have them repaired when obligatory. And, after all, return them to FREITAG when the time comes.
Picture: Elias Boetticher
The FREITAG Mono[PA6] Backpack is out there on the flagship retailer in Zurich, on the FREITAG shops in Tokyo Shibuya, Shanghai, and Seoul, in chosen idea shops, and on-line at freitag.ch.
