Beth Cosmos rescues festival tents to make children’s raincoats
Credit: Beth Cosmos
If you saw a kid running around in one of Beth Cosmos’ raincoats, you wouldn’t believe that the material it’s made from had once been abandoned in a field.
The geometric shapes that form the raincoats are made from tents that are carelessly left behind at UK music festivals.
Beth Cosmos came up with a plan to prevent an incredible amount of plastic waste.
She decided to collect tents that are destined for landfill and use them to create raincoats and sells them through her company Billygoats & Raincoats.
Fast festival fashion
With each festival, Beth estimates that around a third of everyone who attends will leave behind a tent.
Raincoats have always been something that Beth wanted to design, but she then realised that using recycled nylon would be a perfect way to be more sustainable.
“Recycling and sustainability have always been very important to me,” she says.
Beth wrote her dissertation on the relationship between fashion and sustainability and loves that she has been able to carry this through into Billygoats & Raincoats.
One way people can help the environment is to shop more responsibly.
“People wear too much clothing that’s been made overseas,” Beth comments. “These clothes have done a lot of travelling in their lifetime already before they’ve even been bought.”
She added: “I think fast fashion is a massive issue.”
The ripple effect
The customers of Billygoats & Raincoats all clearly care about the environment, Beth has noticed. She is glad that with the Blue Planet effect people are doing more to try and shop more ethically.
For her business, she wanted to hold herself to a high standard, and so it has three main brand ethos points: to recycle, to produce in the UK and to commit to being sustainable. Currently they reuse every part of the tents that they receive.
With Billygoats & Raincoats, Beth is doing her part to cut down on plastic waste. While we might not all be able to make such a big impact, we can all take steps to reduce our plastic use.
We can do this by buying from ethical companies such as Billygoats & Raincoats and making sure we only buy what we need.
