Brisbane designer Alison Schutt has designed an eco-friendly and bio-degradable umbrella. Supabrella is a fair-trade product created from bamboo, cotton and monkey-pod wood with zero traces of plastic.
Alison is the founder and principal designer of Haasch, a brand dedicated to creating sustainable products with a focus on social responsibility and planetary health. She designed Supabrella as regular umbrellas are often made from non-renewable sources and take more than a lifetime to disintegrate when thrown away. Other renewable Haasch products include lamps, rubbish bins, side tables and bean bags.
The stylish umbrellas are available in three sizes and seven different colours, and each come with their own matching shoulder bag to sling the umbrella on your shoulder when not being used. Supabrella is made in a relaxed, open-air production site in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Each part of the umbrella is hand-made by teams of experienced artisans, all of whom are paid fairly and have safe, healthy working conditions. To ensure the Supabrella fabric is biodegradable, the longevity of the waterproofing may only be around two to three years, depending on how often the product is used. Spray treatments to combat this are available to purchase and if the fabric becomes damaged, users are able to have the fabric replaced instead of having to discard the entire umbrella.
Supabrella was launched in London in July, with 10 per cent of sales donated to the CISCA (Creative Industry for Social Impact Awards) fund to support sustainable fashion designers with business mentoring and leadership. For the month of October, 10 per cent of sales of pink Supabrellas will go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
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