Paper Trail

Water vessel, by Beatrix Ong, Lou Blackshaw and James Cropper.

- TF Chan

A love of great white sharks spurred designer Beatrix Ong to sign up for an international marine volunteering programme in 2017. Ong, sustainability advocate and erstwhile creative director of Jimmy Choo, spent four weeks with the Dyer Island Conservation Trust in South Africa, learning about her favourite species but also rehabilitating wildlife that had suffered as a result of pollution. ‘It made me realise that humans are affecting the oceans in a drastic way. It’s one thing to look at data on plastic pollution. Holding an intoxicated penguin brings a whole new level of emotion,’ she recalls.

‘People have questioned how we even begin to reverse our impact on the environment. But I believe that bigger problems don’t have to be met with even bigger solutions. We can start with small changes.’

One change she firmly believes in is abandoning single-use plastic bottles for durable, and eventually biodegradable, water containers – like the vessel she created for Handmade, made of recycled coffee cup paper and inspired by a sea shell she’d collected in South Africa. It’s a project that takes wellness and wonder to an ecological level, championing not just individual wellbeing but the health of the planet.