Designers Lisa Siedlecki and Jennifer Silbert worked in fashion and architecture, respectively, two industries where they saw their share of wasted materials. Three years ago they'd had enough and quit, teaming up to produce something useful and ecologically responsible. "We started Rewilder to combat the fast fashion craze with meticulous design, ethical materials, and high quality," they write.

With the goal of repurposing existing materials, Siedlecki and Silbert began to do research and found that beer manufacturers use enormous swaths of polypropylene filters during the manufacturing process, then throw the unrecyclable filters away. They also found that climbing gyms deem ropes unsafe after just six months of use, then those go in the trash. And they found that painting contractors have no use for the leftover custom color paints from one job to the next.

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