This much I know (about rubbish): Rosie Rainbow, reuse strategist
Rosie Rainbow refers to herself as "womble in human form". She also says she's "hell-bent" on never wasting reusable materials, and has turned this doggedness into a business
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Ever walked past a shop or a cafe under new management and wondered what happens to all those no-longer-on-brand chairs and tables, changing room curtains, solid counters, mirrors or light fittings being ripped out? Or perhaps you might have idly pondered the fate of several floors’ worth of tired office furniture in a workplace refit.
For the most part, it gets skipped, sometimes picked apart for scrap, but very often simply incinerated or landfilled.
It’s not every day you’re asked to make a new material
out of £2.5 million-worth of shredded bank notes.
It’s a wasteful status quo that Material Rescue’s reuse strategist, Rosie Rainbow, is determinedly disrupting and, in case you’ve never heard of a material reuse strategist, you might find Rainbow’s LinkedIn profile clarifying. In her own words, she’s a “Womble in human form”.
Rainbow’s job, in layman’s terms, is to go into, say, an office that’s getting a refit or a shop poised for a strip-out, and to collaborate with the organisation on all the ways the unwanted stuff can be diverted from landfill or incineration. That means she might organise storage, which buys time to move things on, or get hundreds of tired metal chairs resprayed so they fit better in the revamped space, or she could be facilitating repairs or refurbishment work, investigating relevant takeback schemes for unwanted items such as carpet, selling things or ensuring the things that can’t be reused in their current form are recycled properly. She’s basically a waste-reducing, hand-holding fairy godmother when it comes to strip-outs and refits. Here’s what she knows about rubbish.
What I do is pretty niche; it’s not a common job.
I studied and started out in set design and prop making and saw how wasteful these creative industries can be; making something for one production then warehousing it to rot, or incinerating it because it’s top secret. But after five years I realised a new graduate was not going to change the entire film industry on their own.
Now, in a nutshell, I help organisations to move away from the ‘take make waste’ linear model to a circular one. Material Rescue works with businesses from architects and design studios to retail and hospitality brands.
We started as a take-back business for [materials sold by our sister company] Surface Matter but it became clear there was a huge gap in the market when it comes to reusing a whole range of different materials, fixtures, fittings and furniture and we have now expanded to cover all those things and become a business in our own right.
As material reuse strategist, a big part of my work is ‘material mapping’, reviewing existing materials and fixtures and implementing a complete reuse strategy, covering strip-out, logistics, storage and refurbishment options.
It’s not every day you’re asked to make a new material out of £2.5 million-worth of shredded bank notes but the Bank of England asked [Surface Matter] to do just this and it is now seating in the bank’s lobby.
I refuse to throw reusable material away. On one job I organised for some concrete plinths to be crushed and turned into new fixtures, rather than sending them to landfill.
Honestly, I think I’m a nightmare to my husband. We’re relatively new homeowners with a bit of a fixer upper and, because it’s impossible for me to throw anything away, I’m definitely slowing down the process. But we’ll be left with a house where we can be confident we’ve done the right thing for the environment – and for our little girl.
When we got the keys to our house every cupboard, the loft space and the shed were absolutely crammed with the former owner’s personal belongings. She’d passed away and her grandaughter didn’t want to clear the house.
A lot of people said I should take it all to the dump but I was hell bent on not doing that and it’s taken eight months to clear.
We were left with recyclables like broken glass and newspapers, but also trickier stuff; gas bottles, tyres, lots of disability equipment, a creepy looking rocking horse, a full‑size weighted baby doll and much more.
When we cleared the loft, only half a bin bag ended up as non‑recyclable waste. 80% of the stuff - with a scrub - was ready for a new life. I’ve spent a lot of time Googling, researching and selling or donating things. We also had a boot sale where a lot of it went.
‘Away’ is not a place, yet there’s this mindset that when we’re done with something, we throw it ‘away’ but things don’t magically disappear because we’ve decided they’re not valuable any more. All you’re doing is passing that problem on.
Find out more about Material Rescue
Got a suggestion for my next ‘This Much I Know (About Rubbish)’ interviewee? Or got some tips to share? Get in touch or leave me a comment.
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We need more people like Rosie!