OPINION: A new home and the return of Scrap Scrap - Daisy Snow

I write this after an exciting and slightly knackering evening of unpacking, after two months of renovating it feels like a relief to finally be in the process of moving in, having previously lived in a static caravan for the last five years, just the warmth of the log burner in this little farmhouse is extremely welcoming, especially now the weather has changed.Â

This morning I did the first little photoshoot for Ian Snow in my house, this will inevitably keep happening (as the business seems to take over everything!) however it went well, and I’m really pleased with the results.Â

We were shooting part of our latest collection for the Scrap Scrap brand, quilts and cushions made entirely from waste fabrics.Â

Scrap Scrap was the name of my mum Jakki’s first business, she started it in 1990 after being brought up going to jumble sales in Abbotsham every weekend. She realised she had a passion for rubbish and making sure it didn’t end up in landfill so started a business recycling and reusing. She made clothing out of thrown away fabrics, shoes out of tyres & buttons from bottle tops, and these products ended up in Harrods, Selfridges and Topshop, exported all over the world and sold to hundreds of shops and celebrities in the UK.Â

After employing over 50 people, living in a house made of pallets in her factory and regularly making the front page of major newspapers, Scrap Scrap was an incredible success, however after five years she had had enough, had exhausted the UK’s waste fabric supply and was ready for pastures new. Â

Growing up, I was always saddened that Scrap Scrap didn’t keep going, as I loved everything it stood for, it was an important movement and one that was incredibly ahead of its time.Â

Fast forward to 2021, I was desperately wanting to localise more of Ian Snow’s supply chain, had inherited the love of rubbish from my mum and knew that I had to get Scrap Scrap going again!Â

It’s been a difficult start, manufacturing in the UK definitely isn’t like it used to be, with sewing machinists in short supply and the quality of waste clothing much deteriorated after the onslaught of fast fashion.Â

The nature of buying the waste fabric had also drastically changed, previously Jakki would have bought sorted, graded fabrics by the bale from rag merchants, which there were a lot of in the UK in the early 90’s, however I soon found this had changed, and most of the rag merchants no longer existed.Â

All of these changes were interesting to see, it became apparent that most of our waste clothing (whatever doesn’t get sold in charity shops) is now shipped across the world, often to countries in Africa. After researching this more in-depth I learned that our fabric waste was disrupting local markets in whatever place it is sent to, the cheap second-hand clothing was damaging local garment makers businesses, an aspect less talked about when on the subject of fast fashion.Â

To get over this stumbling block we decided to take matters into our own hands and put a call out for waste fabric and clothing on our social media platforms in exchange for vouchers for our website. The response was unimaginable, and within weeks we were literally overrun with fabric, so much so that we really could not keep up with processing, and quickly ran out of space for it all!Â

I designed products to use whatever waste we had available and we started making! To begin with, just dabbling in various clothing and homeware pieces and eventually deciding to stick to homeware as that’s what I’m personally good at, this latest collection that we shot today finally feels like we’ve got there, made from 100% waste and made in Devon!Â