A beautiful selection of designs using the common coat hanger. Everyone knows that a clothes hanger makes a great aerial antenna but these designs from Organelle Design, Natalie Sampson and 1961 EcoDesign are on just of the hook!
Repurposed for a reason?
We use a lot of hangers in the West? How many? It's a hard to say for certain, but in February 2012, M&S celebrated the success of their charity hanger recycling drive which, in only six months, saw 100 million clothes hangers from Marks & Spencers shoppers recycled in aid of UNICEF. The campaign was a great success - simply add in turn in the hanger from your purchase at the til - and helped raise £370,000 for the charity's imminently worthy water project, but isn't that a quite a lot of hangers? You'd be surprised. Way back in 2008, it was reported that in the US alone, the nation's fashionistas and clothing retailers were chucking away more than 8 billion hangers, enough to fill the Empire State building.
Why so many hangers?
It's pretty simple. Cheap imports. Most of the clothing that comes into Western shopping outlets comes already placed on a cheap plastic hanger. So the shop hangs it up, gives it to us and then - because it's not really usable beyond this point - the hanger gets chucked away. Because of their composite material, many of the hangers that are used in the retail industry are not actually recyclable, however, in England, retailers are starting get their act together, with supermarket giants Sainsburys reusing 4,297,935 hangers and recycling a further 16,351,005 in 2011.
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