How a billboard became 75 bags
A megaposter is a strange object. It is enormous, it is built to survive a railway station for months, and then one day it comes down and its whole purpose is over. Almost all of that material is thrown away — it is a coated tarpaulin, which makes it hard-wearing and equally hard to recycle.
This one hung in Bern Central Station. When its run ended, Audi Switzerland gave it to us instead of sending it to landfill, and TwoLives cut it into 75 bags.
Because the poster was printed once, every bag came out of a different part of the artwork and no two are the same. The colour you choose describes what is mostly on the front of your bag, not exactly what it will look like — a stripe may land where you expected a block, and that is the point. Look closely and you may work out which part of the poster you are carrying.
The material is the reason these behave differently from a cotton tote: printed tarpaulin with a light barrier, 760 g/m², so it is properly weatherproof and stiff enough to stand up on its own. It also means hand wash only.
Still a goodbag
Every one carries an NFC chip, like the rest of the range. Scan it in a participating shop and you collect Seeds you can put towards trees planted or ocean plastic collected. The difference here is only where the fabric came from.
TwoLives
TwoLives give advertising material a second life. They take banners and billboards headed for landfill and cut, sew and finish them into bags — every piece different, because the print they are cut from never repeats.